He may have failed to make the grade, but Boris Johnson cannot get rid of Gavin Williamson

He’s unpopular among Tory party activists and his beleaguered tenure as education secretary has seen multiple calls for his resignation. But, as Sean O’Grady explains, any attempts to push aside Williamson could come back to haunt the prime minister

Williamson may survive a shake-up but not because he’s competent (AFP)

Somewhat overshadowed by the dramatic slump in the prime minister’s approval ratings among Conservative Party activists earlier this week is the continuing disappointing showing for the education secretary, Gavin Williamson. Much has been made of the “swing” in Boris Johnson’s net approval ratings, down 36 percentage points to from plus 39 to plus 3, thanks to his hypocrisy over self-isolation, by-election results and a lack of direction in his government.

Even more remarkable has been the decline in the popularity of Williamson. In June last year, before the exams fiasco, Williamson was on plus 43 per cent, well up with the pack. Soon, after all the U-turns over grades and university entrance he went far into the red, and has stayed there ever since, running at a depressing minus 44 per cent in the latest survey. He is thus bottom of the Conservative Home league table of cabinet ministers, and if he were a school he’d be liable for special measures.

Having been sacked by Theresa May as defence secretary in a dispute about the leaking of details of a National Security Council meeting, Williamson was rewarded with a second chance in cabinet after he helped run Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign (and played a role in the resignation of May). It’s fair to say that, for whatever reason, he’s not been able to make the best of it. The latest report from the Institute for Government (IFG), an independent think tank, makes for uncomfortable reading for any remaining fans of Williamson. The IFG concludes: “Its most important conclusion is that the most unforgivable aspect of what happened is not just the failure to make contingency plans in the summer of 2020 but the refusal to do so – when it was already obvious that fresh school closures might well be needed, and that exams might have to be cancelled again. Lessons were not learnt from the first lockdown, with the result that, for both school closures and exams, the story from July 2020 to January 2021 was a case of ‘pause, rewind, repeat’.” Even with his, paradoxically, populist push to get Latin back into state schools, things look bleak for Williamson. But nil desperandum, Gavin!

Williamson’s problems leave Johnson with a bit of a Williamson problem. Usually it would be simple to drop Williamson, because he’s performed poorly, or is perceived to have, and, as is apparent from the Conservative Home survey, there would be few grumbling from the grassroots. Only Matt Hancock and their hapless failed candidate in the Chesham and Amersham by-election are less popular among the stout men and women defending British Conservatism right now.

Yet Williamson has a reputation. As chief whip he was adept in the darker arts of party management, and he has been influential in the parliamentary party during the last two contests, carefully choreographing the voting of the MPs to ensure that Johnson ended up facing Jeremy Hunt in the last round and the members’ ballot, the preferred outcome given that Michael Gove or Dominic Raab might have threatened the thumping victory Johnson sought. Williamson might also plead that much of the chaos about the schools – exams, closures, testing – in fact emanated from No 10 and the crazy world of Johnson and Dominic Cummings. As someone who has observed Johnson at closer quarters than most, he might, if fired, choose to echo Cummings’s criticism of the prime minister’s suitability for high office. Williamson is, in fact, perfectly capable of treachery, and has stabbed previous leaders in the back with no compunction, and would happily make it a hat-trick. Et tu, Gavin?