Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Cabinet reshuffles cause political excitement and in the Westminster village are high drama. Elsewhere they are boring, irrelevant or pointless. Small ones made necessary because of a minor scandal or an early retirement, cause just enough of a ripple to drive the ten o’clock news. Big ones and the one now in progress is as big as they get, raise many questions, especially if they occur in the last few months of a parliament. If the person was useless in this ministry, why can we expect them to shine in that one? If the previous line up was full of duffers, why not act earlier? Is this person really retiring, or walking out because they are pissed off with the direction of travel?

Inevitably a complete government revamp in the run up to a general election has something of a Titanic air. Nowadays particularly, politicians, unlike other celebrities, are interesting only to other politicians. They are mostly unknown to ordinary people, who have no interest in them at all. Changing the Cabinet around has much less effect than it once did. This is because most distrust politicians more than any other class and voting intention is driven by mood rather than personality or policy. Fewer people now use their vote that at any time before. Moreover the mood is now anti-establishment, which makes the next election hard to call.

Waiting in the wings is one figure who is anti-establishment and populist and ready to cause a political explosion. He is Nigel Farage. Behind him lurks Boris, ready to pick up the pieces. It is the spectre of these two which drives events in Downing Street today.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2014 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Malcolm Blair Robinson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.