A question of balance

Theresa May seems to have made a good choice, replacing Priti Patel with Penny Mordaunt at International Development. Ms Mordaunt is a fresh face, apparently liked by MPS, and has a healthy extra-parliamentary CV. The Cabinet needs more vim. The Prime Minister’s announcement, in this newspaper, that the official date for Brexit will be cast in stone is a welcome attempt to regain control of the narrative: Brexit is happening. The Government’s primary responsibility is to get it done.

Which is why all this talk of maintaining balance in the British Cabinet is a bit odd. Was Ms Patel replaced by Ms Mordaunt because the latter is a Brexiteer? If so, a like-for-like trade buys into the narrative that there is a carefully constructed balance on the Tory front-bench between Remain and Leave. In fact, the Cabinet is stuffed with Remainers, many of them in the most important positions, such as Philip Hammond at the Treasury and Amber Rudd at the Home Office. By contrast, the Leavers were largely crow-barred into the departments that handle Brexit, with an air of “you broke it, you fix it”. Some of them have turned out to be the most competent members of the Government.

After a referendum and, most importantly, a general election, why is there still a need to talk in terms of balance at all? Conservative MPS were elected on a manifesto commitment to take Britain out of the EU. The notion – sustained most strongly by the BBC – that the Cabinet has to function as some tug-of-war between different points of view is thus an illusion. The people voted for Brexit then voted for the Tories to implement it. They should put aside their differences and get on with the job.