Loyal fixer Lidington gets ‘deputy’ role
Remainer who twice won University Challenge shifts from justice secretary to May’s right-hand man
A PROMINENT Remain campaigner has been appointed by Theresa May as her new right-hand man after Damian Green was forced to quit.
David Lidington has been moved from justice secretary to Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
His new role will see him stand in for Mrs May at Prime Minister’s Questions and he will also chair several of the biggest Cabinet sub-committees, including influential Brexit sub-committees.
Mr Lidington is also the former leader of the Commons and is a generally popular figure among Tory MPS.
The former Europe minister, who helped David Cameron renegotiate Britain’s EU membership, campaigned for Remain in the referendum and said in November: “I haven’t changed my view about the stand that I took during the referendum.”
A veteran of Sir John Major’s administration, Mr Lidington has held a number of roles, including Foreign Office minister and leader of the House. Although the Aylesbury MP has taken on the role of Minister for the Cabinet Office, he has not been handed Mr Green’s former title of first secretary of state.
Mr Lidington, a history buff, will hope his belief that Tudor court politics is a “pretty good guide to life in Westminster today” means he is well prepared for the power struggles that can dominate a minority government.
The father-of-four, who worked for BP and Rio Tinto, the mining giant, before entering Parliament, twice captained a champion team on University Challenge, leading Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, to victory in 1978, beating Dundee University, and repeating
the success in 2002 in a tournament to mark the 40th anniversary of the show.
Mr Lidington has replaced Mr Green, who was forced to quit after an official inquiry found that he had been misleading about claims the police had found pornography on computers in his parliamentary office.
The 61-year-old is renowned as a loyal and discreet fixer.
He is thought to have assumed that his front-line political career was over when Mrs May unexpectedly promoted him to her Cabinet when she became Prime Minister.
He will sit on 19 Cabinet committees and will chair nine, including two on Brexit.
His job will be less high-profile and involve far more work behind the scenes as he seeks to smooth over Cabinet disagreements on Brexit and acts as the Prime Minister’s eyes and ears.
David Gauke succeeds him as Justice Secretary. Considered a safe pair of hands in government circles, No 10 has been known to regularly “uncork the Gauke” when times are politically tricky, deploying him to tour the television and radio studios.
The solicitor is the first minister with a legal background appointed to the role since barrister Ken Clarke took the position in 2010.
A lifelong Ipswich Town supporter, Mr Gauke has been an active member of the Conservative Party since 1993 and was elected the MP for Hertfordshire South West in May 2005.
In the 2010 general election, he was re-elected and shortly afterwards was appointed exchequer secretary to the Treasury, at the time the youngest Conservative minister in the Government.
Born in 1971, he went to a state comprehensive in Ipswich before reading law at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and later working for a City law firm. Mr Gauke, who also had served as chief secretary to the Treasury, lives in Chorleywood, Herts, with his wife Rachel and their three sons.