What the commentators said

“This reshuffle is personal” for Sunak, said Steven Swinford in The Times. He declared during his leadership campaign that he wanted to make Britain a “science and technology superpower”, and he really meant it. When he was at Stanford University, he immersed himself in “academic debates about the role of innovation in driving growth”, and he strongly believed that the science brief wasn’t getting the attention it deserved. He may have been right about that, said Pippa Crerar in The Guardian, but his Whitehall rejig isn’t going to deliver many benefits before the next election. If the public even notices these changes, “they’re unlikely to care”. In political terms, the reshuffle was a “damp squib”, agreed Nigel Jones in The Spectator. It’s all very well setting Britain on “the road to a smart, techno-nimble innovative future in distant years to come”. But what’s really bothering voters right now are all the strikes plaguing the country. Sunak seems “either unable, or unwilling” to provide an answer to these.

The reshuffle is unlikely to deliver the “100-day reset” that the PM desires, said Rachel Wearmouth in The New Statesman. Strikes and the squeeze on living standards will continue to take a toll on his Government. And he faces the unsolved problem of Dominic Raab, whose position is widely believed to be “untenable”. Chances are, Sunak will have to reshuffle his top team again in a few weeks, which will “only reinforce the impression of disorder”. People keep urging Sunak to sack Raab, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times, but I fail to see why he should. The charge sheet against the Deputy PM is less than damning, at least from what we know so far. We’re told that, during one meeting with staff, he crossly threw three cherry tomatoes from his salad into a paper bag. He could be “very icy”, reported an official. “He’d be given a piece of paper and there would be silence, and he’d say, ‘This isn’t good enough.’” It’s hardly the stuff of horror films, is it? Granted, Raab sounds like a “nightmare boss” and a rather angry, unpleasant man. But does that alone justify drumming him out of office?