There is lots of talk in the media about Julian Smith having been the best Northern Ireland Secretary for years.
Come on! Look at the competition:
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Perhaps, but his record in just six months shows the impact that an energetic person can have. I think he will be sorely missed.
I think Sajid Javed is the shortest-lived Chancellor of the Exchequer since Iain Macleod had a hear attack a month after being appointed in 1970. I’m not sure we will miss him quite as much.
But the upshot appears to be that anyone who disagrees with our Prime Minster gets sacked.
The whole point of Cabinet government is to corral a group of people with different ideas to reach a consensus decision which everyone accepts collectively. It loses its purpose if it becomes an echo-chamber of yes-men and -women.
Agreed
There is now no opposition, anywhere
In fairness Boris has kept his job in the Cummings reshuffle
🙂
So, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, born in 1980 (not even 40 until May). Winchester, PPE at Oxford, Fulbright at Stanford, Goldman Sachs, and then a hedge fund. MP since 2015. Typical CV for a Tory MP, but that is rapid progression. About a year older than Osborne was when he became Chancellor, but with even less political experience, albeit more experience in the City.
Well, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but I can’t help thinking that he will owe his political career to the PM and will take orders accordingly.
He will
And it will end in a trip off a cliff edge
Forgot to mention, his father-in-law is an Indian billionaire. Also par for the course! But perhaps that gives him enough independence to avoid being entirely a creature of Johnson and Cummings.
Andrew says:
“Typical CV for a Tory MP”
You don’t mention alumnus of Goldman Sachs. So that makes also for typical CV of ministers of finance across much of the globe. 🙁
Co-incidence…? Stretching credibility a little I think.
One of Javid’s previous special advisers was sacked by Cummings, who is another ‘special’ advisor. I thought an adviser was there to advise, which could mean that advice need not be heeded by the ELECTED politician, but it is not for the advisor to carry out any decision.
Brexit supporting bureaucrats aka ‘special advisors’ in Whitehall are controlling the political agenda. One of the reasons for leaving the EU was to ‘take back control’ from the said bureaucrats in Brussels. What a joke.
It does give credence to the rumour that Johnson is just a puppet and, with his parliamentary performances recently, it may well be true.
Why does a politician, who must obey collective responsibility, need political advisers?
When interviewed after his resignation, that’s how he described them.
Surely an amateur in charge of the economy needs economic advisers.
George S Gordon says:
“Surely an amateur in charge of the economy needs economic advisers.”
I’m not sure about that. Economic ‘advisers’ steeped in orthodox economic dogma think they must devise policy on affordability grounds. It’s not their job to do that. And they have shown themselves to have very limited understanding of economic realities in a modern monetary environment.
@Andrew Crow
I get your point about orthodox economic dogma. As Richard has said, this is endemic in the Treasury, who will perhaps have less sway now – and rightly so.
I have a long-held concern about amateur chancellors, and it seems reasonable that they should seek wider advice than from the Treasury. At least then there is a chance that different options will be proposed. Perhaps the latest chancellor will have heard that famous Nobel Laureate pronounce that austerity was a zombie idea.
This is not the government I would have wished to have demonstrated if, but if this can be interpreted as a declaration that a government will not be told by bean counters what it can afford to do, I guardedly welcome it.
Very guardedly. But it has already broken the taboo on re-nationalising rail networks without a murmur of dissent from the media (?) How else can this government break the mould?
This is quite interesting from 29:30. Paul Krugman has Andrew Neil nodding sagely about the merits of deficit spending…..
Oh, dear. There should have been a link …whoops!
Paul Krugman plugging his new book. From 29:30. Interesting sage nodding of approval from Andrew Neil…. 🙂
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000f99j/politics-live-13022020?fbclid=IwAR3hnwyeNKJvzyT5ekbh_jSJEg7bwtXEbSnN-mTfIEAY3YxUYf13xGJXtmM
as seen by the NI political site:
https://sluggerotoole.com/2020/02/13/the-northern-ireland-secretary-of-state-league/
Julian Smith is ranked 4/12. Villiers and Bradley come in as 21/21 and 20/21
On Villiers:
The dubious honour of being the least competent Northern Ireland Secretary of State was always going to be a hotly contested one. Reasonable arguments could be made about many on this list. However, the incessant stream of nonsense and hand-waving dismissals of the impact a hard Brexit would have on Northern Ireland whilst in post as Northern Ireland Secretary marks Theresa Villiers as the worst of all.
On Bradley
I gave Karen Bradley a bonus tenth of a mark on the grounds that, being completely out of her depth, she didn’t quite have the same level of malevolence as her predecessor-but-one. It’s as if Mr Bean had been sent instead of Paddy Ashdown to take up the post of High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2002. If you’ve ever had a dream where you’ve had to land an Airbus A380 in a storm, teach a class in quantum mechanics, or dissect an elephant on stage, then you will have an insight into how Karen Bradley’s terrifying 18 month tenure as Northern Ireland Secretary must have felt like.
Very good