What can Boris Johnson do about his blundering ministers?

If the PM decides it’s time for a reshuffle, does he have the talent available to replace the underperformers, asks Sean O’Grady

All the prime minister wants for Christmas is a capable education secretary (AFP via Getty)

Given everything, it is probably just as well for Gavin Williamson’s career that he chose to let the students go home for Christmas. The beleaguered education secretary has thus managed to transform himself from the “invisible man” into Santa. Whatever else, he will not this Christmas be faced with trying to suppress Colditz-style escapes from student halls of residence. In the House of Commons it was all Williamson could do to prevent himself from breaking into a cover version of Chris Rea’s jolly 1986 hit, “Driving Home for Christmas”. Yo ho Ho!

But where will Gavin’s political base be, come Christmastide?

Ominously for Williamson and the many other underperforming ministers sitting around the cabinet table there will probably be a reshuffle after the party conference. Apparently, “competence and control” will be the criteria the prime minister will apply to his colleagues’s track record (to which they might respond that he might try judging himself and his chief adviser in the same way). In Williamson’s case the fiasco over exam results and the rather chaotic return of university students do not obviously suggest an abundance of competence and control in the department of education, though some senior officials have left the department and the exam quango, arguable scapegoats.

Yet such is the comparative weakness of the premier’s position that even sacking Williamson would be a gamble. As a former chief whip and a campaign manager for Johnson’s 2019 leadership bid, (and Theresa May in 2016), Williamson knows where a lot of rotting Tory bodies might be exhumed to embarrass Downing Street. After May dismissed Williamson as defence secretary in May 2019, for leaking confidential discussions, he helped bring her down and install Johnson. The lesson for the hapless Johnson is clear.

Others are much weaker. A combination of uncertain grip, unpopularity among party members and public obscurity would indicate Robert Jenrick’s time overseeing controversial planning applications might be drawing to a close. Fond as the prime minister is of Priti Patel, his closest advisers don’t share his admiration, and the still-unpublished report on her alleged bullying behaviour might tip the balance against her. The Home Office would be a nice reward for somebody. On the other hand, the Cummings affair showed just how stubborn the PM can be defending close allies such as Patel.  

Losing Matt Hancock at Health and Social Care would look too much like an admission of failure. Liz Truss probably have saved her skin with the Japan trade deal, though her Department for International Trade might find itself gobbled up by the Foreign Office, once it’s digested the Department for International Development.  

The last reshuffle, in February,  saw Johnson cynically drop some old senior Brexiteers once he had got his Withdrawal Bill through parliament (ironically) and they had outlived their usefulness - Theresa Villiers, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey. The unexpected survivor at that time was the gaffe-prone Jacob Rees-Mogg. He still looks an odd mascot for this technophiliac government, and is still capable of a surfeit of his antique candour.  

The second challenge is whether there is sufficient talent on the next rung down to lend the government some element of executive competence, creativity and telegenic charm. The prime minister prefers to be surrounded by loyal friends well known to him, including from his time as Mayor of London, which might point to a promotion for the likes of Kit Malthouse or Zac Goldsmith.  Ex-DFiD secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan might make a minor comeback. Meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt will continue to offer a glimpse of what might have been from the backbenches.  

The other question is how much of the government’s astonishing inability to govern is down to its lacklustre team or a deeper problem with the way the machinery is organised and reformed. Why so many U-turns and half-baked policies? Why such a culture of the last minute essay crisis? Why so poor at communications, when they were so effective at campaigning? Why so many civil servants abused and forced out?  

Probably all sorts of factors are at work, as well as the unprecedented impact of Covid and Brexit. Either way the man nominally in charge (Johnson) has to take responsibility, and fix it. Hence the need to refresh his team. We should not expect too much from it.  

History shows that reshuffles and dramatic changes rarely make much difference to the fortunes of any government. The “night of the long knives” under Harold Macmillan in 1962 (seven cabinet ministers fired) and Theresa May’s even more bloody massacre of the Cameroons in 2016 (ditching nine) were headline-grabbing; yet neither did much lasting good.  

Most prime ministers fasten upon some bright young star to bring salvation, and more often than not they are found wanting. Johnson’s appointment of Rishi Sunak to the chancellorship after the resignation of Sajid Javid is a rare exception to that rule. Sunak’s elevation from a lightweight figure with the ambience of a children’s TV presenter to elder statesman has been one of the few high points in a dismal year for the Conservatives. Judged by “competence and control”, the chancellor looks ripe for promotion, and uncomfortably so for his present boss.