"Dorries on a free to DCMS..." Why the British media treats cabinet reshuffles like transfer deadline day for the tedious and talentless...
From Chuckles Chorley to Laura Kuenssberg, ever-ready to regurgitate a government line, the Westminster hacks were over-excited.
There was a rare outbreak of honesty during the beginning of the cabinet reshuffle yesterday1 as Robert Peston, who made more dud predictions than a seaside psychic, tweeted:
Ministerial source: “Priti Patel not looking happy”. I simply pass on.
There’s been no better summary of most political correspondents in our busted system than those last four words: “I simply pass on.”
On Times Radio, home of the most self-satisfied presenting lineup this side of the Gadaffi’s failed home shopping channel2, Matt ‘Chuckles’ Chorley had got long-suffering colleagues at TalkSport to create transfer day-style jingles which he triggered every few minutes. They hooted…
Stay ahead of the game with instant insider knowledge and erudite opinion: Matt Chorley’s Westminster Transfer Deadline on Times Radio! Get in!
… to Chorley’s chimpanzee delight. His giddiness was matched throughout the Lobby and the wider Westminster press pack.
Cabinet reshuffle days are like watching a bunch of e-number addled Year 7s gossiping about what the idiot 6th formers are up to; it all seems very dramatic but when the dust settles, it’s rarely more consequential than discovering who the ‘cool’ lad is taking to prom.
Where transfer deadline day can shift the fortunes of a football club, a cabinet reshuffle is theatre for the political hacks and red meat for the party activists. It’s no surprise that Liz Truss — elevated to Foreign Secretary — has been doing well in Conservative Home’s polling of the addle-minded party faithful, while Dominic Raab — demoted — and Gavin Williamson — fired to spend more time with his spider — were about as popular with them as Jeremy Corbyn’s range of homemade jams and jellies.
But where the comparison with transfer deadline day does hold is that you’re certain to see journalists fall flat on their faces in search of a scoop with all the staying power of a mayfly in mid-afternoon.
At the National League level3 of news hacks, the Daily Express’ Deputy News Editor, Sam Stevenson, rushed to tweet:
NEW: Whitehall source tells me Gavin Williamson spotted on Victoria Street on phone to his mum in tears.
… then swiftly deleted it — but not before the vulture PoliticsForAll account had swiped it — and tweeting a follow up that simply read:
Removing earlier tweet on Gavin Williamson as no way of verifying claim from source #reshuffle
But Stevenson was embarrassing himself at an amateur level. In the Premiership of pratfalling hacks, Robert Peston and Laura Kuenssberg battled it out for the top spot. Peston’s strategy seemed certain to secure him the win — he tweeted a series of utterly wayward predictions that were swiftly disproved — but he had not accounted for Kuenssberg’s willingness to dispense government-approved lines quicker than Michael Gove in an Aberdonian night club.
"I assume Oliver Dowden will be new education secretary,” Peston tweeted shortly before Wurzel Gummage’s management consultant cousin was shifted from Culture Secretary to Conservative Party Chair. Peston had predicted Nadhim Zahawi — who is now Education Secretary — was set to be Party Chair. Mark Spencer remains Chief Whip. Peston simply passes on.
Still, Peston’s Mystic Meg-level predictive skills were overshadowed by the pen portraits offered by Kuenssberg along with each promotion and demotion. She wrote of Dominic Raab, flung from the Foreign Office and installed in the Ministry of Justice, with the consolation prize of Deputy Prime Minister to pop on his American Psycho-style business card:
Sending him to Justice is a match for his legal experience, he was a minister there before, and a senior lawyer…
In the world of British political journalism, where words ceased to have fixed meanings sometime in the early-80s, it might be possible to describe Raab as a “senior lawyer” but in the reality the rest of us have to reside in, it’s laughable. The Secret Barrister explained:
Raab has never been a “senior lawyer”. He was recently qualified when he entered politics. As Brexit Secretary, he thought it unnecessary to read the 35-page Good Friday Agreement. If Justice Secretary is “a match for his legal experience”, god help us.
That’s the same Dominic Raab who couldn’t drag himself away from the closed sea to make calls during the evacuation of Afghanistan and who sources in the Foreign Office claimed only read 20% of his ministerial briefings (at best).
When the reliably toxic Nadine Dorries4 was catapulted into the post of Culture Secretary, Kuenssberg regurgitated another nugget dropped straight into her gob by the government:
Nadine Dorries, best selling author and goverment minister, confirmed as Secretary of State for Culture.
She followed up later by noting:
Who would have thought there would have been a Culture Secretary who had been in the TV jungle - #imaministergetmeoutofhere
In this clown car reality with a Prime Minister who gained his initial public profile through gooning on Have I Got News For You, once found himself stuck dangling from a zip wire like an incompetent jester, whose father was an I’m A Celeb contestant, and whose recent counterpart as US President was a reality TV star who also appeared as a foil in the WWE, I’d have taken that bet any day.5
A reporter actually interested in committing acts of journalism rather than cold stenography of lines from Number 10 might have noted Dorries’ has tweeted things like this in the past…
Left-wing snowflakes are killing comedy, tearing down historic statues, removing books from universities, dumbing down panto, removing Christ from Christmas and suppressing free speech. Sadly, it must be true, history does repeat itself. It will be music next.
… making her even more of a culture warrior than her predecessor Dowden and the de facto Minister for the Daily Telegraph opinion section.
And the focus on Dorries’ novels — her first The Four Streets sold over 100,000 copies as an ebook but only shifted only 637 units in paperback — is much less interesting than her blog, her greatest work of fiction.
In 2010, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority criticised Dorries for running a blog which “mislead constituents” on issues including how long she spent in her constituency. Dorries said:
My blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact. It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to Mid Bedfordshire. I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another.
That’s a lot of words when three words would have done the job: “I’m a liar.”
But reading Kuenssberg’s article on the BBC News website about the reshuffle suggests why she might be sympathetic to Dorries’ flair for ‘dramatic license’ (bare-faced lies). Like Pam from Gavin & Stacey, she just loves the drama. Reflecting on yesterday’s events she writes:
"This is a mad way to run the country," confessed a member of the government.
Whether prime ministers wield sharp knives or attack with blunt spoons, reshuffle days like this are indeed a strange mixture of bravado and farce.
Bravado when, earlier, one cabinet minister told me, "I think I'm OK," as, ashen-faced, looking nauseous and clammy, they were en route to see the prime minister before promptly being sacked.
… The way the most senior government politicians are recruited and removed is bizarre and brutal. For weeks ministers have nervously inquired of journalists: "Is it on?" And inhabitants of the Westminster village who claim real knowledge of the plan are rarely those who truly know.
But, whatever the curious British traditions of how it's done, it is what is done that makes the difference. Prime ministers rarely wield as much power as on the day of the big hirings and firings.
This is a repetition of myths not reality. The idea that yesterday was one of hugely consequential "big hirings and firings” must be maintained to make the breathlessness of the coverage seem necessary rather than a ridiculous pantomime (the kind Dorries thinks have been “dumbed down”).
That’s why Kuenssberg once again feeds her audience undigested lines from both sides of the conversation between Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab:
Removing the foreign secretary is a big deal. Dominic Raab's always happy to let it be known that he holds a black belt in karate. And his conversation with the prime minister this reshuffle day took longer than expected, suggesting he fought his move pretty hard. Sources suggest he managed to wangle the ill-defined title of deputy prime minister out of Mr Johnson.
Being justice secretary, running prisons, courts, and the legal system, is of course a huge job. Downing Street insists it's not a demotion, and that it doesn't want this move to be seen as punishment after what looked, to many people, like a debacle in Afghanistan.
Were Westminster hacks not desperately reliant on access from a government that has made it clear that it will keep critics out of the room, Kuenssberg, her colleagues, and rivals might have spent more time looking at the embarrassing run of recent Foreign Secretaries from Boris Johnson (whose era Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe remembers clearly) to Jeremy Hunt to Dominic Raab (a man baffled by the concept of Dover) and now Liz “pork markets” Truss.
There’s also a mixture of naivety and ignorance — whether real or feigned — in Kuennsberg’s analysis. She writes…
There are some other slightly puzzling aspects. Steve Barclay was, until the reshuffle, chief secretary to the Treasury, wielding the calculator on what is a hugely important Spending Review, when cash for departments for the next few years is fixed. That review is coming in just a few weeks' time, so you might wonder at the wisdom of moving Mr Barclay right now.
… In a similar vein Anne-Marie Trevelyan, also a strong Johnson backer, returns to cabinet as trade secretary. Irrespective of the merit of her move to that department, Ms Trevelyan had been part of the government's team preparing for COP26, a major international event that starts in about 50 days. If it's a true priority, unpicking a part of the team right now may raise a few eyebrows.
… as if Boris Johnson has any priorities beyond staying in Number 10 and any principles beyond winning on his own terms. A line later in the piece — “What's harder to divine is any one strong political ideology, or any radical guiding idea.” — comes close to getting it. It’s hard to define any ideology or ideas because there aren’t any. Johnsonism is a reflection of one deeply insecure man’s desire to be loved at any cost. That’s it.
Over at The Daily Telegraph — Britain’s premiere fanzine for tweedy racists (“Next week: Your free guide on how to talk to tradesmen!”) — there’s a selection of unhinged reactions to the reshuffle to choose from.
Scenery-chewing uncooked egg man, Allister Heath — a regular character in this newsletter — presents his latest dispatch designed to keep Telegraph readers awake at night (“Boris’s Thatcherite new Cabinet will fail to reverse Britain’s dangerous Left-wing drift”). It has so little relationship to reality that it could be a new film starring Vin Diesel: Fast & Furious 30: Left-wing Drift.
Heath speaks of Liz Truss “covered in glory” — I really don’t want to check his browser history — betrays his Dungeons & Dragons dreams by describing Oliver Dowden as the “surprise slayer of the woke” (with fur loincloth and enchanted axe included?) and moons over Dominic Raab, claiming that it’s great that he’s gone to Justice because “his instincts are spot on.” Knowing what we know about Heath that simply means he considers Raab to be as insane as him.
Heath is delighted that four out of five co-authors (Raab, Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and Priti Patel) of terrifying Brexiteer treatise Britannia Unchained are now in the Cabinet. That’s the book in which Raab — a man of epic idleness and obvious incompetence — joined his collaborators in dubbing the British “among the worst idlers in the world… obsessed with the idea of the gentleman amateur”.
Meanwhile, Camilla Tominey takes a break from obsessing about Harry and Meghan to obsess about the cabinet. Beneath the headline, Boris Johnson’s overcautious reshuffle fails to inspire confidence, she opens with the old ‘dictionary definition’ trick beloved of hacks without inspiration…
Reshuffle was the right word for it. Literally defined as “interchanging the positions of members of a team”, this was not so much a case of out with the old, in with the new but playing the same people in different positions.
… before dripping some acid on Michael Gove:
Arguably the tactic that took the Tory faithful most by surprise was the redeployment of former Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove to Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The man who had taken so much pride in abbreviating his previous role as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to “CDL” is now to be known as MiHoCoLoGo. How fitting that it should sound like the sort of thing that is played in the early hours of the morning in the nightclubs of Aberdeen.
And that was not all. Being the Prime Minister’s resident “details man”, Mr Gove was given added responsibility for levelling up, the Unions and elections, proving that no job is too big for the former running mate who famously claimed he would make a better Prime Minister than Boris Johnson.
As you might expect from a Telegraph columnist, Tominey dismisses shortages with a cheap aside (“Mr Gove [is dealing] also with the food shortages that are threatening supplies of pigs in blankets this Christmas.”) and quotes anonymous Tory grandees extensively. Grandee simply meaning desiccated old monster who will pick up the phone.
And of course, she ends with a football analogy more painful than a vintage Vinny Jones late tackle:
Nadhim Zahawi was a surprise as Mr Williamson’s replacement as Education Secretary but not when you consider that his ability to handle a broadcast round without making a complete and utter twit of himself more than qualified him for the position.
This was less Paris Saint-Germain buying Messi and more Gareth Southgate deciding to play his right back at left back during the Euros, while refusing to start with Jack Grealish. Up-and-coming players with potential were once again left to languish on the back benches, while there was no return for any Ronaldo-style Peter Pan politicians.
It wasn’t creative, it didn’t particularly inspire confidence and it suggested a degree of over-caution by a manager seemingly intent on being the only star striker at No 10.
Elsewhere in the paper, Juliet Samuel pens an encomium to Liz Truss arguing that she is “used to being underestimated but… could well be a future Tory leader”. I’d argue that Truss is adequately estimated and found by anyone who isn’t a true blue Tory headbanger to be thicker than the mince she’s been so desperately trying to export to China.
And finally from The Telegraph, Janet Daley — still in possession of a byline photo that makes her look like a cursed waxwork come to life on the old pier abandoned after that mysterious fire — drops a “will this do?” contribution demanding that Zahawi go to war with “the militant education unions”.
The Daily Mail is delighted with the reshuffle, hailing Truss and Dorries as “queens of the jungle” and excitedly declares that the latter will “fight the woke warriors at culture”. In the op-eds, Steven Glover — whose zombie-like print byline photo has been replaced by one from 30 years ago online — heaps on the drama beneath a headline that makes Johnson sound like a rotund Zorro: A flash of steel. Dead wood gone at last. But is this Cabinet reshuffle enough for the hard road ahead?
Glover, with The Daily Mail’s typical commitment to facts, swipes The Daily Express’ deleted assertion to claim “Williamson was reported to be in tears”, before concluding “the new Cabinet is an improvement on its predecessor. The Government is in better shape”, resolutely ignoring all the obvious rot.
Meanwhile, The Sun approves of the reshuffle — no surprises there — but demands that Boris Johnson’s team “deliver for Sun readers”. You’d think a paper so obsessed with tits would be upset to see Gavin Williamson leave the Cabinet. Trevor Kavanagh writes elsewhere in the paper that the reshuffle “was a brutal display of authority by a PM at the height of his powers” having accidentally submitted his private fan fiction in place of a column.
Equally unsurprisingly, The Daily Mirror accurately calls the new cabinet “the worst team in Britain” and “not so much a reshuffle as an admission [Johnson] is a poor judge of character.” Which is a good line if you ignore the fact that the Prime Minister, a vacuum of morality and principle, has absolutely no interest in good character, only fealty and the ability to front out fuck ups.
The Times calls part one of the reshuffle “a day of unexpected brutality” and shares lots of gossip, briefing and counter-briefing alongside a big Match of the Day-style graphic of “who’s in and who’s out”. Desperate as ever to humanise a Prime Minister who is actually about as loveable as an anthropomorphic bin bag, it shares this from a government source:
Johnson was said to be emotional as he carried out the dismissals, telling them he had no choice because he had to “make room”. A government source said: “It wasn’t easy for him. Boris hates doing it.”
Please get out your Conquest of the Useless-branded tiny violins now.
Cabinet reshuffles are sound and fury signifying very little. The ‘changes’ made by Johnson yesterday are framed across the British press today as highly consequential because if they weren’t then all the running around, shouting and excitement by hacks would be for nought. They need this ‘drama’ to have meaning and so will build up non-entities and bolster the reputations of frauds, charlatans and monsters.
Transfer deadline day is interesting because football clubs can change their fortunes by buying a better defence or securing the services of a mercurial playmaker. Cabinet reshuffles contain no such magic. It’s just moving the same clowns to different seats in the clown car, doing nothing to fix the smoke billowing from the engine or the fact that the tyres are flat.
It continues today with the junior ministers today, the sort of faces that make you say, “Didn’t I see him on Crimewatch?” or “I’m pretty sure she once tried to sell me a pyramid scheme… I mean ‘multi-level marketing opportunity’.”
I may have imagined this in a fever dream.
I really miss it being the Vauxhall Conference. It really had a better ring to it.
I can’t include all the awful things Dorries has done here as it would fill the whole newsletter. Another time perhaps.
Dorries had the Conservative Party whip removed for a time after she went AWOL from Parliament to appear on the reality show.