What does Gavin Williamson have to do to be sacked by No 10?

The education secretary has been responsible for one disaster after another, and yet he remains in post. John Rentoul considers why he’s been able to cling on to his job

Williamson: not a strong parliamentary performer (PA)

Gavin Williamson appeared in front of parliament’s Education Committee yesterday and did little to recover the dereliction into which his reputation has fallen since he became education secretary a year and a half ago. 

At the time when academic grades awarded by algorithm were cancelled after being awarded in England last summer, it was widely assumed that he would be moved from his post soon. Yet he is still there, and still answering questions about policy errors for which his department is responsible. 

Yesterday, the committee asked him about the inadequate food parcels sent to families with children entitled to free school meals. He reacted as if it was nothing to do with him: “When I saw that picture I was absolutely disgusted. As a dad myself I thought how could a family in receipt of that really be expected to deliver five nutritious meals.”

He was able to read out the brief that had been prepared for him about how the department was trying urgently to rectify the problems with the food boxes, and he explained that the system of vouchers for food would shortly be restored. But as soon as he was asked questions to which he didn’t have a prepared reply, he became hesitant and inarticulate. 

He is not a strong performer in the Commons chamber, although he can occasionally summon up some conviction, especially on behalf of the majority of students who do not go on to higher education. More usually, he is forced to defend yet another policy embarrassment – most recently the decision to close primary schools last week after most of them opened for one day of the new term. That was a decision taken by the prime minister, in which Williamson appeared to be a helpless bystander, although it was he who was then sent to parliament to justify it. 

Labour’s uncertainties, especially about school closures, have helped him. Kate Green, his shadow, is an effective parliamentary performer, but she and Keir Starmer have overreacted to their party’s earlier equivocation, which meant that she hasn’t been able to put real pressure on Williamson for keeping schools open for as long as he did. 

It may be that Williamson is just a poor public performer who has hidden administrative qualities, although we would need to see some evidence of them. More convincing is the idea that he has political skills that are not evident to outsiders. There was a mystique about his role as Conservative chief whip under Theresa May – not just because he kept a pet tarantula in his office – and a mystery about how he became a central figure in Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign. 

Yet his survival casts an interesting light on the complex calculations which prompt prime ministers to promote some people and not others, and which keep people in post when others might fall. Williamson and Priti Patel, another minister who is unpopular with the general public (although unlike Williamson she has the advantage of being popular among Tory party members), have both had spectacular falls from office. He was sacked as defence secretary by May because she thought he leaked a decision of the national security council, although he denies it. Patel was sacked as international development secretary, also by May, for running her own foreign policy while on holiday in Israel. Both of them appeared to be useful to Johnson in distancing himself from his predecessor.  

Johnson had been intending to carry out a cabinet reshuffle by now. The only part of it which has survived the worsening coronavirus situation, however, is Alok Sharma’s appointment last week as full-time president of the UN climate summit that will be held in Glasgow in November, and the promotion of Kwasi Kwarteng to fill the gap as business secretary.  

It may be, then, that Williamson’s job has been preserved by the equivalent of the coronavirus furlough scheme.