16/07/2014
Charles Moore gets into the
Spectator with a brief commentary on the reshuffle just past, labelling it as the worst we've seen in 25 years. The
Mail then has Max Hastings tell us that the reshuffle is: "A shabby day's work which Cameron will live to regret".
I will go with Hastings, but don't think it's actually worth arguing the Moore point. Nor do I completely endorse his view that David Cameron "had established a surprisingly strong position as the leader whose unpopular but necessary policies were starting to work".
However, Moore also thinks that Cameron and his team "seemed steadier and more able than their opponents. Now he has thrown that away with changes so large that he looks as if he disrespects what he has achieved".
With that view, I have a certain amount of sympathy, in fact taking a harder line than mere "disrespect". On greater reflection, I see the reshuffle as an insult, appointing inexperienced ministers, who have not served their "apprenticeship" and who are thus quite unfit to be Secretaries of important departments of state.
Some of the changes are simply capricious, done for presentational reasons, demonstrating Mr Cameron's own unfitness for office. We're back to the "
A-list" mentality", the "women's list", and the "Notting Hill set", with a dilettante prime minister using the Cabinet as his own personal plaything, rather than as an instrument of government.
On balance, I thus think that Cameron has done his own electoral chances more harm than good. Just as he was beginning to look vaguely electable, with an
ICM poll showing a mere one percent gap between the Labour and Tories, he has done something extremely ill-advised.
What was as interesting in this poll though was that UKIP had dropped to nine percent â back to single figures. YouGov
gave them ten percent over the weekend, so this doesn't immediately strike as an outlier.
With
little sensible on offer, it is unsurprising that UKIP is fading back into obscurity, but now it seems that Mr Cameron is determined to give them another chance. No doubt, they will blow it, as they always do, but no one can say that they are not being given plenty of opportunities to make their mark.
But there is now another player ready to emerge. By Mr Cameron getting rid of Owen Paterson, says Charles Moore, has turned his strongest cabinet bulwark against UKIP into a powerful enemy.
But the real target will be the ever-popular Mr Juncker - who was enthroned by the European Parliament yesterday - and the rest of the "colleagues". Mr Paterson may well emerge now as the leader of the "Eurosceptic" wing of the Conservative party and, by default, a new national leader, ready to take on the referendum campaign, should the Conservatives win the election.
If UKIP wrests the crown from Cameron, however, there will undoubtedly be a leadership challenge, and we're back to the original "plan B" where we get a referendum after the 2020 election, under a new Tory leader. Perhaps, with his fatuous reshuffle, Mr Cameron has moved one step closer to defining who that will be.
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