Janet Daley:
The new prime minister must push for a genuine Brexit, but keep peace in the party. Here’s how…
an we look beyond the overhyped soap opera of the leadership contest for a moment? I am willing to bet the farm on Boris Johnson becoming the next leader of the Conservative Party, because any other outcome is pretty much mathematically impossible. So the drama – such as it is – of the next few weeks is going to be irrelevant soon. I suggest we agree on that and get down to the serious business of playing Fantasy Cabinet.
Who is given major posts in a Johnson government is a matter of more than usual importance, partly because ministers will have an exceptional degree of independence – which is to say, they will be left to run their departments with very little supervision from their prime minister who is – putting this as gently as possible – a famous delegator of responsibility. But also because the constitution of the Cabinet will make or break the possibility of unifying what has become a torridly fissiparous party.
The first question that these appointments will answer is: how much priority is being given to uniting the party, as opposed to taking an unequivocally firm line on Brexit?
There is a fairly clear choice to be made. All the major positions could go to those who are either rock solid, lifelong Leavers (Gove, Raab) or convincing Born Again Leavers (Javid, Hunt), who will then lock arms and present an utterly impermeable, consistent face to the new Brussels team with whom they will be meeting.
The coherence of this plan has an obvious appeal: it would announce to the world that the first ineluctable objective of the Johnson government was, as the man himself has said, to deliver a genuine Brexit. A blood oath of dedication to that goal will be required for anyone wishing to be on the top team. Message to the country from Mr Johnson: I am as good as my word. This is what I said had to be accomplished before any other political issue could be resolved and I am determined to get it done. I suspect that such a declaration would earn – at least in the short term – considerable public confidence and help to dispel any doubts about Mr Johnson’s true conviction.
Then again, there is also a persuasive case for acknowledging that the parliamentary party contains a majority of Remainers and that some of them will never be reconciled to a relentless push for a real exit. Excluding them from the top tier of government could entrench their resentment and make sabotage from the backbenches virtually inevitable. It would not be unreasonable to conclude that a front bench that contained a number of the more respected and sensible members of that camp would be constructive and less likely to produce endless bitterness.
This is a terrible choice for an incoming leader to have to make. If he takes achieving a proper Brexit as his primary raison d’être and then he and his dogged team of likeminded Leavers get locked into an intractable face-off with Brussels, his government will be seen to have failed.
But if, for the sake of party peace, he puts some Remainers in major posts, he could end up having to appease them with a fudged deal
(in effect, accepting the Withdrawal Agreement that Brussels claims cannot be reopened) and we are back to where we were with Theresa May.
Having posited this unpalatable dilemma, I will proceed to outline some possibilities for reconciling the two options. Note: these comments are not the product of privileged confidences. I have deliberately not consulted with any of the named individuals for fear of their being incriminated by involvement in any such projections. Please believe that I am absolutely winging it here.
First up must be the biggest job: the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which has come to be seen as a virtual running mate of the leader – much like an American vice president. The huge influence of Chancellors such as Nigel Lawson and Gordon Brown has been central to the reputations of governments. The Chancellor’s role now is absolutely critical to the Brexit project (which was made clear by how much Philip Hammond was able to obstruct the process), but at the same time he or she must also speak on the more traditional policy functions of tax and spending.
Conclusion: this position must go to a convincing Brexiteer but, looking to the future, it has to be someone who will not, for example, be drawn into the Treasury’s favourite pastime of creating new forms of torture for the self-employed and struggling small businesses.
Jeremy Hunt, through his own entrepreneurial experience, and Michael Gove, through his father’s, would appear to meet this description, but there are problems with both of them: Mr Hunt is less implacable on the need for a clean Brexit than he might be, and Mr Gove has an unhappy history of betrayal of trust with Mr Johnson. So I would suggest that Mr Hunt stay on as foreign secretary and, perhaps more eccentrically, that Mr Gove be made secretary of state for health, where he might well introduce the kind of fearless reforms that he achieved at education.
And for the chancellorship? How about Sajid Javid, who is a dedicated Brexiteer with vast banking and finance experience and – as everybody rightly says – a personal story that a modern Tory party led by an old Etonian needs.
Dominic Raab should certainly be Brexit secretary where, under the new dispensation, he could make proper use of his hard negotiating tactics, and that reasonable, unifying Remainer Amber Rudd could return to the Home Office. Matt Hancock might be a good fit for environment if Gove went to Health. Penny Mordaunt should stay at defence. And the new surprising social media star, Rory Stewart, is a natural for the Department of Culture, in whose activities he would have a genuine interest.
See? It isn’t impossible if there is good will. But how much good will is there for a Johnson government?
Excluding Remainers from the top tier of government could entrench their resentment and make sabotage from the backbenches virtually inevitable