10 things you didn't know about the new cabinet | thearticle

10 things you didn't know about the new cabinet | thearticle


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1)   The new cabinet ministers are nearly all from the south of England, other than the obligatory Scottish and Welsh secretaries. The north, west England and the industrial Midlands have no


MPs in the cabinet. It is the most Home Counties government in British history. 2)  T reason doth prosper. A number of ministers have shown serial disloyalty to their party leaders, David


Cameron and Theresa May. Some began in the Commons in full-on opposition to John Major. This the new cabinet has more than a whiff of Jeremy Corbyn about it. The Labour leader shares with


many in the Johnson cabinet not just a visceral dislike of Europe, but a serial inability as an MP to be loyal to his party leaders and prime ministers. 3)  Few have business experience, in


the sense of working in industry, other than financial services and the City. In the past, Tory cabinet members came from family firms, or had farming backgrounds, or had created big


successful businesses in the mainstream economy – like Michael Heseltine and Peter Walker. These are men and women who know about financial engineering not industrial engineering.  4)  There


are significant Vicars of Bray, like Nicky Morgan and Jo Johnson, who were unable to serve under Theresa May as she drifted helplessly towards the rocks of a No Deal. The prime minister’s


brother resigned to call for a new referendum. Now their red box ambitions have overwhelmed any belief that amputating the UK from Europe was bad for Britain. Matt Hancock was particularly


Brayish in boosting Boris on the airwaves. 5)  The party within a party that is the ERG has done exceptionally well. The hard line Brexit Bolsheviks once dismissed by John Major as “the


sound of white coats flapping” are now controlling parliamentary business and deciding huge issues of state through the prism of leaving Europe. The Tory MP Julian Critchley described as


“garageistes” the hard-faced Tory MPs from small businesses who prospered under Mrs Thatcher. This cabinet is stuffed full of “Farageistes”. 6)  None of the group has any experience of


working in Europe, none are fluent in a European language, none – as far as I know – read daily continental papers, or have much contact with European politicians. Churchill in the 1930s


travelled endlessly across the Channel meeting especially French political leaders and military men. Today’s cabinet holidays in Europe, but only where the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are


on sale. 7)  None of them – with the possible exception of Michael Gove – can be described as an intellectual. There are fluent journalists like the Johnson brothers, but no-one with a


substantial book to his or her name. The attempts by Philip Blond with his red Tory ideas, or George Freeman MP, or the journalist Matthew d’Ancona to bring to life a centrist liberal


Toryism are now over. 8)  The main foreign point of reference for most is the United States where Sajid Javid worked in Wall Street in the heyday of the Alan Greenspan years when financial


probity and prudence was thrown out of the window as the Big Short and the values of Jay Epstein predominated. Others like Michael Gove are close to the American Enterprise Institute and


pro-Israeli Evangelicals. It remains to be seen if the UK is ready for full on Tea Party and Steve Bannon politics. 9)  None seem to be practising Catholics, Anglicans, Jews or associated


with any faith. Does Sajid Javid attend a mosque or fast during Ramadan or obey Muslim dietary rules? Blair was a regular mass attender, even if he delayed his formal entry into the Catholic


church until after he left Downing Street. Mrs May of course was a devout practising Anglican. This cabinet seem curiously Godless – again something in common with the Trump-Bannon axis


with which the new cabinet is aligned. 10)  There are no great orators. Boris Johnson is an incomparable after-dinner speaker and genuinely funny on the stump or on television. But in the


Commons, as anyone who observed him either before or after his eight years as London Mayor will confirm, he never made an impression and never trained himself to speak in the rather


conversational style with a limited number of witticisms that commands attention from fellow MPs. No one can stay awake when Javid, Patel, or Theresa Villiers speak. The one good speaker is


Michael Gove, but for the rest high quality political oratory is dead.