Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

This is a completely new government. And it is being put together with forensic precision and an eye for competence. One by one the hot air balloons and meddlers are returning to the back benches. This is good news for the country, which desperately needs a government of authority and mission. A mission a good deal left of Osborne’s food-bank Utopia. Of course not everybody will support the mission and on the other side of the House is an Opposition which, were it a person, would be Sectioned for its own protection.

So far it has launched a coup against its leader which failed,  a no confidence motion which was ignored, a squalid fix to keep the landslide backed incumbent off the ballot paper in the event of a contest and, the latest, is a contest in which they cannot agree upon their candidate. Meanwhile in Downing Street, a place now receded into distant folk memories of these deluded parliamentarians and likely to recede further still, events unfold at lightening speed. For the Labour Movement this could be a new dawn, but for the current Parliamentary Labour Party it is all but over. If not beaten by Corbyn, they will certainly be beaten by May, Boris et al.

Mrs. May is tough and determined. Time will tell if she is right or wrong. That is what politics is about. What we do know thus far is that her reputation for caution appears to be overstated. The summary firing of Osborne and the appointment of Boris as Foreign Secretary are hardly the work of a cautious hand. Cunning might be a better word. First she has replaced Osborne with the much more astute and experienced Philip Hammond, an arch Remainer, while another, Amber Rudd, takes charge at the Home Office and yet another, Michael Fallon, stays put in Defence.

Next she has taken three prominent Brexiteers and put them in charge of all the stuff to deliver the wild promises they made in the Brexit campaign. Loads of cash flooding back to the NHS, easy negotiations with the EU for free trade, halting the flood of EU migrants, return of sovereignty, trade deals all over the world for the asking, new sunny uplands; it is quite a sack full of Santa’s goodies. Which Boris, David Davis as Exit Secretary and Liam Fox as International Trade Secretary, will work hard to fill. And if the sack is full of garbage and hot air in the end, whose fault will that be? Exactly.

The Tory party recalls with high emotion the days when it was led by a grocer’s daughter. They were quite something. Well now it is the turn of the vicar’s daughter. And that could be quite something else.