What does Rishi’s reshuffle tell us about his plans for the next year?
It was, for political geeks, the ultimate marmalade dropper of a reshuffle morning. Pre-9am, a cool-as-a-cucumber David Cameron, if you can believe it, strolling up the steps of No10.
Hours later, after promotions, demotions, sackings and squabbles, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, himself a Cameron-era MP, has (we think) now lined up his cabinet for the last time ahead of a general election.
But, as fun as it is – nevermind who’s up and who’s down – the real question plaguing Westminster tonight is what Sunak’s choices can tell us about the next 12 months.
To start with the obvious, Suella Braverman – queen of the Tory right – is out.
David Cameron, Lord Cameron, even – a socially liberal, so-called compassionate Conservative – is back.
Clear as that cheery post-resignation whistle, with this reshuffle Sunak is sending a message out to the One Nation wing of his party, asking them not to give up on him yet.
Is it a bid to shore up the shires and reclaim the Blue Wall from Ed Davey’s increasingly OTT stunts? Or an attempt to exert authority over an increasingly fractious yet despondent party?
Either way, if Boris Johnson’s 2019 MPs were summed up by the Red Wall tagline, then, from Oliver Dowden to Laura Trott, Sunak’s 2023 cabinet is the rise of the 2013 SPADs.
But beneath today’s headlines, what may seem like a major strategic move is in fact a wild pendulum swing in the opposite direction from the last major strategic move.
Just weeks ago, making his leader’s speech at the Tories’ annual conference in Manchester, the Prime Minister cast himself as the man who represented change.
“Politics doesn’t work the way it should,” he told voters. “Thirty years of vested interests standing in the way of change…. It doesn’t have to be this way. I won’t be this way.”
Whether or not people were listening – and the polls still indicate that if they were, they don’t like what they’re hearing – today’s reshuffle indicates a swinging change in strategy.
Out with change; in with continuity. A clear pivot, but a pivot towards more of the same.
Still with me?
Of course, freezing out the hardliners is likely to spell trouble. In an apparent reference to the reshuffle, Liz Truss ally Simon Clarke took to X (Twitter) to muse over some “controversial choices here from the manager… never wise to lack options on the right wing”.
Elections may well be won on the centre ground, and some would say Sunak is right to realise that, if a little late. But if that precious territory has already been given up, is it too little, too late?