THERESA MAY'S NEW CABINET : WHERE WILL IT TAKE US ?

With Theresa May's new Cabinet now in place, it has to be said that it's been a pretty brutal 'reshuffle' as well as being a bit of a 'curate's egg'.

The new Prime Minister has made huge changes, with 9 previous senior ministers leaving the cabinet and making this one of the most wholesale reshuffles of modern times. George Osborne, Michael Gove, Nicky Morgan, John Whittingdale, Theresa Villiers, Oliver Letwin, Mark Harper and Baroness Tina Stowell have all been sacked while Stephen Crabb has resigned. Rarely has there been such a clear out.

The new appointments have not necessarily been without interest. The appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary took the early news, being something of a surprise to almost everyone, though Philip Hammond's move to the Treasury had been much anticipated. Few have kept their old jobs, Jeremy Hunt at Health and Michael Fallon at Defence being the only 2 major figures so to do, while the Scottish and Welsh Secretaries also hung on, at least partly due to their positions as the only acceptable candidates.

However, some other posts may be more contentious. Andrea Leadsom, who made such a horlicks of her leadership bid, has unaccountably been rewarded with the job of Environment Secretary, God knows why. Liz Truss, who strikes me as being pretty useless and certainly has presentational issues, has been promoted to become Justice Secretary and the first Lord Chancellor in British history; again, I find the appointment baffling. Similarly, the reasons for the appointments of Amber Rudd to the Home Office and Karen Bradley to Culture, Media and Sport, plus the move of Justine Greening from International Development to Education, seem to owe more to their gender than any real track record of political achievement, none of them having been MPs for very long. Priti Patel is another woman who has been promoted to Cabinet level after not many years of parliamentary experience, while Natalie Evans, who becomes Leader of the House of Lords, only joined that illustrious house 2 years ago.

Many of the rest have, at least, years of experience behind them. David Davis who will oversee the country's exit from the European Union, Liam Fox who has been given responsibility for international trade, Damian Green, Chris Grayling, David Liddington and Patrick McLoughlin have all been MPs for periods approaching 20 years or more. Others who have less experience include Gavin Williamson as Chief Whip and Sajid Javed as Communities Secretary, the latter seemingly being demoted after having had rapid promotions previously, and James Brokenshire, all being MPs only since 2010. Greg Clark has been an MP since 2005 and is the new Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

One wonders if this mixture of experience and inexperience, novelty and femininity will produce the desired results, or will there be another reshuffle before very long ?

BORIS JOHNSON : FOREIGN SECRETARY !

Fortunately for the UK, Andrea Leadsom finally saw sense a few days ago and Theresa May has inherited the post of Prime Minister unopposed. While some have complained that she has not been elected to the office, the quick resolution of vacancy created by David Cameron's childish and destabilising resignation can only be good news, added to the fact that the post of Prime Minister is not an elected one anyway.

Whether Mrs May will prove to be the right choice as PM is something that we will have to wait to discover, however, her initial decisions seem promising. Having campaigned, albeit quietly, for the UK to remain in the European Union, she had made it clear that 'Brexit means Brexit', and her first senior cabinet appointments certainly back this up. Chancellor George Osborne, previously seen as Prime Minister in waiting and David Cameron's 'right hand man', has been kicked out altogether. Osborne was an ardent 'Remainer' and issued numerous dire warnings about the probable economic effects of Brexit, as well as having made something of a Horlicks of his Budgets over the last 3 or 4 years. Osborne's replacement is former Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, a 'Remainer' apparently seen as a safe pair of hands.

To replace Hammond at the Foreign Office, Prime Minister May has made a real statement of intent by appointing Boris Johnson who led the Brexit campaign, while her choice for the new post of 'Brexit Secretary' is David Davis, another ardent Brexiteer. While the appointment of Davis had been suggested as a possibility, no one could have imagined seeing Boris at the Foreign Office; his bumbling, slightly dishevelled style surely does not fit with that department's imagne of itself, nonetheless, there he is. What these appointments suggest to me is that Mrs May really does mean to move pretty rapidly to get the negotiations for the UK's exit from the EU, and negotiations to sort out our independent relationship with the rest of the world, under way.

The quick confirmation of David Cameron's replacement at Number 10, has also helped to calm financial markets with the stock exchange showing some improvement from recent low levels and the pound rising somewhat against both the dollar and the Euro. While there may still be some volatility in the months and years ahead, the initial signs are that the horrors predicted by the Remain campaign were largely over-hyped.

Mrs May will reveal more of her ministerial appointments over the coming hours and we will discover more about her likely style and intentions in Government. No doubt there will be a few surprises along the way.

IT'S THERESA MAY FOR ME.

And so the Conservative Party has decided that our next Prime Minister will be either Theresa May or Andrea Leadsom, the final choice to be announced on September 9th.

 

Theresa May has many years of Parliamentary and government experience and seems to be the preferred candidate of Conservative Members of Parliament; she campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU, though was not exactly at the forefront of the campaigning. In truth, she was probably a rather reluctant 'remainer' who rather hedged her bets when it came to choosing sides and has already suggested that her negotiating stance with the EU will be quite tough.

Andrea Leadsom only entered Parliament in 2010 after a career in financial services. She has progressed fairly quickly to junior minister level but has no experience at cabinet level. It has been suggested that she may be a bit of a closet 'remainer' even though she was a leading light in the 'Brexit' campaign, and some of her comments suggest that her negotiating stance may actually be more liberal than that of Mrs May.

Some of Leadsom's supporters have said that her lack of senior government experience is no concern as she has plenty of experience at a senior level in her previous career. They also cite David Cameron's lack of government experience when he became Prime Minister in 2010 which, to me, is no recommendation at all; Cameron has hardly been a Prime Minister who has covered himself in glory and history will largely ignore him except for the glaring issue of the EU referendum.

Theresa May entered Parliament in 1997 and has been at a senior level in the Party since 1999. Appointed as Home Secretary in 2010, she has now been the longest serving in that post for over 60 years, surviving remarkably well in a job which has traditionally been a graveyard for politicians. Indeed, Mrs May seems to be something of a survivor, having come unscathed through the various turmoils of her Party over the last 20 years. Kenneth Clark has been heard saying that she's good but also that she's a 'bloody difficult woman', something which could easily be seen as a recommendation.

I don't have a vote in this contest and, as a committed 'Brexiteer', if I did I ought to be a supporter of Mrs Leadsom. However, I really think that her lack of political and diplomatic experience is a massive stumbling block. Mrs May, on the other hand, does have a track record at the highest level, has the confidence of an overwhelming majority of her Parliamentary colleagues and seems to know her own mind. Consequently, I find myself firmly in the corner of a 'bloody difficult woman'; let's just hope that, as our second woman Prime Minister, she proves to be as tough as our first.

CHILCOT : BLAIR REMAINS DEFIANT

After years and years of procrastination, the Chilcot Report has finally been published. Rather surprisingly, the report has pointed fingers, very particularly at former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Way back in the mists of time, Blair involved the UK in a costly and pointless war in Iraq. He claimed that the Iraqi government was a major threat to peace and had 'weapons of mass destruction' galore; he backed up his claims with an assortment of information from the security services and others. Now, it seems, that much of what was claimed was spurious or even downright lies.

Chilcot has concluded that Blair made a secret arrangement with the US President, George W Bush, that the UK would take part in a war against Iraq, pretty well 'come what may'. He didn't communicate effectively with his cabinet colleagues or Parliament, and didn't initiate any post invasion planning. The security information was largely flawed, misrepresented, or entirely bogus and there were no 'weapons of mass destruction'. Effectively, the invasion was unjustified and even illegal.

Blair's response has been to say that he has no regrets about his decision to take the country to war and says that his actions were justified by the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He seems to believe that the Iraq of today is a better place than the Iraq of yesteryear, even though it is now a country in terminal meltdown. Previously it had a powerful dictator who kept the country under control, albeit brutally at times; now it is supposedly democratic but is in a constant state of civil war, with no one in effective control. How is one condition better than the other ?

More than 200 British citizens died during our involvement in the conflict and many thousands of Iraqis, most of them civilians, also perished. The country is certainly no better off than it was previously and may well be worse off; some of its people have been reported as saying that they regret the demise of Hussein as, at least, under him there was order.

In my eyes, Tony Blair was, and is, an egomaniac, driven by a desire to be seen as a great statesman, bestriding the world and upholding his notions of decency and morality. He saw himself standing alongside the US President as being a clear indication of his own importance and was more than happy to ignore truth, accept dubious security services reports without question and send thousands of British troops to war for his own personal ends. The British people were, at least, misled, at worst lied to, all in the pursuit of one man's goals. 

Blair is an utter disgrace and yet, as a by-product of his activities, he's amassed a fortune in the upper tens of millions of pounds. While soldiers died, he made money; while the middle east, and beyond, is a disaster zone, he makes money as a supposed mediator. How on earth does he get away with it ? 

EU REFERENDUM : IT AIN'T ALL OVER 'TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS !

As the dust clears, it is also becoming clear that some pro-EU campaigners have not given up hope of keeping the UK in the Union, come what may. In particular, that well known champion of democracy, Tony Blair, has said that the UK should 'keep its options open' and suggested that, while Parliament has a duty to act in accordance with the will of the people, that will could change.

Blair has been careful to hedge his remarks with so much waffle that he could, if it came to it, claim that he was doing nothing but expressing an opinion about the overall position, without suggesting that there should be any back-tracking over the referendum result. However, knowing how attached he is to the political status quo and his own best interests, his weasel words can be interpreted in only one way. He is laying the ground for a second referendum or, even, for the possibility that Parliament simply ignores the original result citing changed circumstances, an unacceptable exit negotiation or some other manufactured nonsense as reason.

There is, undoubtedly, a move afoot to find a way round the inconvenient result of the referendum, exactly as there was in previous referendums in other EU member states. On several occasions, countries have got the 'wrong result' in referendums and their governments have simply held others until the 'right result' was achieved. Brexiteers should be under no illusions; the referendum result was far from the final act in this saga. In fact, unless we get a genuinely pro-exit Prime Minister and get on with the process of leaving 'tout suite', we may well never leave.

You have been warned.

EU REFERENDUM : WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD ?

What a few days we've had since the EU Referendum on 23rd June. The Prime Minister has announced that he'll resign once a new Parry leader has been chosen; the leader of the Labour Party is under siege and could well be forced to resign, while his party is in total disarray; Boris Johnson, long seen as a Prime Minister in waiting, has been torpedoed in spectacular style; stock markets in Britain and around the world have suffered huge daily movements and the pound has fallen dramatically. Added to all of this, the reactions from various European political leaders and bureaucrats have ranged from welcoming the result to sheer hatred.

Within the UK, there have been suggestions that we might go down a path previously trodden by the EU of finding a way to hold another referendum in order to get what the ruling class sees as the 'Right Result', that is, a vote to remain in the EU. Different bases for such a move have been suggested, all of which would be not just undemocratic but positively anti-democratic, denying the views expressed by the majority of the people.

Scottish politicians, with the exception of the Conservatives, have talked about Scotland's place in the EU as if it is an independent country, ignoring that its membership of the Union is only as a part of the United Kingdom. The prospect of a second 'Independence Referendum' seems to be now in the offing, though the current economic situation may make that an unlikely event in the immediate future or, even, in the medium term.

The United Kingdom is a deeply divided nation. Scotland, or left wing Scottish politicians and supporters, wants to separate itself from England, a country that it hates with a vengeance; indeed, Scotland was a traditional enemy of England in the past, often allying itself with that other traditional enemy, France. It seems that Scotland wants to stay in the EU, though its political leaders appear to totally ignore the reality of their situation; quite simply, in order for Scotland to be a member of the EU it would have to make an application to join as an independent country and accept the Euro as its currency. Such an application could take years to negotiate and would be dependent on a referendum vote to leave the UK. Will that ever happen ?

As well as Scotland, Northern Ireland also voted to remain within the EU as did the London region of England. Thankfully, neither the Northern Irish nor the people of London have yet suggested that they should divorce themselves from the rest of the UK and seek to stay in the EU, however, the differing attitudes of people in these regions from those of the rest of England and Wales are concerning. While Northern Ireland is something of a special case, London and its surrounds have become increasingly isolated from the rest of England in recent years. Property prices, wages, and the increasing centralisation of government and other major institutions have all served to turn large parts of south east England into what is almost a separate country. Many of those who live in and around London have become ridiculously wealthy, mainly due to the inflated house prices, and can choose to move anywhere in the country; those who live elsewhere can only dream of ever being able to move to London. This is an unhealthy divide that has generated very different outlooks on the world.

What will happen in the coming weeks, months and years no one knows. However, there will be a new Prime Minister, and probably a new leader of the Labour Party, within the next few months. The pound will probably recover some of its lost ground once a new Prime Minister is in office and the stock market, having lost 10% and then regained 15% over the course of a week, will probably remain rather turbulent for some time. Scottish politicians will continue to be noisy but probably won't be able to do much for at least a few more years, and the UK will invoke 'Article 50' around the end of this year or early in next. Formal exit negotiations will be much more amicable than anyone currently believes as its in no one's interests to be overly difficult; nonetheless, there'll be a lot of loud rhetoric, mostly from within the EU. The UK will formally leave the European Union in 2019.

By 2020, and following our exit from the EU, the UK  will be prospering. By then, also, one or 2 other countries may have taken, or be actively considering taking, the same path as the UK and the EU will be in terminal decline. The 2020 UK general election will see the emergence of a new left of centre party, replacing the current Labour Party which will have fallen apart; that election will see a massive Conservative majority returned to Parliament, with the left wing vote split and, quite possibly, the Liberal Democrats making something of a recovery. By 2025 we'll know for sure that leaving the EU was the right thing to do and the 'younger generation' who were so keen to 'Remain' will be strangely silent about the whole referendum. The EU itself will be suffering from major infighting and on the point of total collapse.

Am I right or wrong ? Only time will tell.