Nobody saw it coming. Within a few hours of his arriving in Number Ten in the late afternoon, the biggest cabinet massacre in modern history was complete. 17 gone in record time and replaced. Nothing like it in living memory. The full cabinet gathered for its first meeting at 8.30 am today.
Theresa May received a standing ovation from the Commons as she exited her place for the last time as prime minister. This was deserved as she was one of the most dedicated, certainly the cleanest (from scandal) of the fifty plus we have had. She was also among worst. Her government was the worst by far. In three years it achieved next to nothing except routine details and much of even those were in confusion. Not only was her Brexit process an omnishambles almost beyond comprehension, but public services are near breaking point across the piece because of the failure of the economic model. Her Cabinet was nearer a riot than an executive body, riven with grandstanding, disagreements and enmity. She was pathologically slow at reaching a conclusion, bad at reading hidden signs pointing to better policies, a bad communicator to real people in the world outside Westminster and a terrible campaigner.
So Boris showed magnanimity when he did not sack the whole lot. He showed also that he may not be the buffoon most people, outside his circle, think he is. What happens next is not yet clear, but two things are. First, Boris is about Boris First. Holding the record as GB’s shortest serving premier will not appeal to him. So whatever he says now, he will not in fact go down in flames pursuing a cause which he deems lost. That might include a hard Brexit. Second, whether Corbyn gets to Downing Street or not, he has in fact achieved an historic shift of the centre of British politics, which has now moved sharply to the left. Boris has seized that ground. Thatcherism is dead and buried. Boris intends to concrete it over.
A lot of people who are celebrating a right wing coup today are in for a very nasty shock. That includes a good slice of his cabinet.