Boris Johnson is rebuilding his junior ministerial team today after appointing a new cabinet that he hopes will keep the Conservatives in power beyond 2024.
The prime minister “laid the groundwork for the next general election” with his “ruthless” cabinet reshuffle, in which Gavin Williamson lost his job as education secretary and Robert Buckland had his justice brief removed, said The Guardian.
The rejig “clears out failing ministers and rewards those with positive publicity”, the paper continued. Michael Gove was “handed the key job of making ‘levelling up’ a reality for sceptical voters”, while Liz Truss, “the media-savvy darling of Conservative grassroots members”, replaced Dominic Raab as foreign secretary.
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The shake-up comes amid hopes that the UK has weathered the worst of the Covid pandemic and that No. 10 can now focus on domestic reform. And with the next general election expected in 2024, “Johnson must find a way of reassembling the coalition of traditional Tory voters and former Labour switchers that coalesced behind his ‘get Brexit done’ message in 2019”.
According to the Daily Mail, Johnson is “thought to believe delivering on his 2019 pledges will be critical to his hopes of winning the next election”, after he said last night that his new cabinet would “work tirelessly to unite and level up the whole country”.
The Telegraph suggested that the election could come even sooner than had been expected, with the PM potentially eyeing up a 2023 vote. After being shunted from his role as culture secretary to become party chair, Oliver Dowden reportedly told party staff yesterday: “You can’t fatten a pig on market day. It’s time to go to our offices and prepare for the next election.”
As commentators deliver their verdicts on the reshuffle, Politico’s Esther Webber argued that the initial impression is that Johnson has been “strengthened, with a tighter grip on the reins after what had started to look like a form of post-pandemic drift”.
But as well as a new focus on the domestic agenda, he has revealed a “willingness to wield the ax at the expense of loyal foot soldiers”, she added.
“They treat alpacas better,” chimed in Quentin Letts in The Times, adding that Raab - demoted to justice secretary and deputy PM - apparently “refused to swallow the cyanide”, delaying Johnson’s schedule for the day. “Worse than getting our Patterdales to eat a worming tablet,” Letts quipped.
But for No. 10, it was a “day for the doers”, a “refreshed team that can get things done”, be it building houses, sorting school exams or pushing through tougher prison sentences, said the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
“Nearly two years after the election, it’s perhaps the start of Mr Johnson’s third act as prime minister,” she said. “And while the shuffling of his cabinet pack has passed, so far largely without incident, there is no doubt about the scale of the challenge, individual and collective, that they face.”
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