There are no set dimensions for a Westminster “big beast”, no qualifying threshold of heft. Former prime ministers earn the designation by default. Others have to earn their beasthood with some combination of experience, intellect, independence and character. Those are traits that I fear will be in short supply in the next parliament. There will be only one former chancellor in the Commons: Ken Clarke. Alan Johnson’s decision to stand down means Clarke will also be one of only two former home secretaries. Theresa May is the other one.
Gordon Brown’s retirement removes the last former prime minster. Prime Minister May will not have to share parliament with anyone who knows what it is like to do her job. A shortage of veterans strengthens an atmosphere of ballot-box revolution. May has called this election to ratify her status as supreme Brexit leader — and, if last week’s local elections offer any guide, she will be crowned. Officers of the old regime, rattling their chains to Europe, will not be welcome in her victory parade. The past must not be allowed to embarrass the future. No one with first-hand experience of being prime minister thought it was a good idea to leave the European Union (EU).
Every former foreign secretary took the same view. The collective insight of the older generation is banished, along with the ghost of May’s more judicious self. The calendar will say June 9, 2017, but Tory clocks will be reset to Brexit Time: Year One, Day One. The opposition in England — Scotland being another story — will be depleted, demoralised and divided. In a one-party state, checks on prime ministerial power must come from within the government. The current cabinet gives little hope of that mechanism working. May’s system of central command and control was notorious at the Home Office. Delegation was scarce, consultation was narrow, the circle of trust was tiny. Officials and ministers doubted those arrangements could be transplanted to Downing Street.
They were wrong.
May’s front bench team is weaker, more deferential to No 10, than any cabinet I can recall. It is hard to name ministers with discernible agendas. None wields their portfolio with the distinctive purpose that Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith, Andrew Lansley, Harriet Harman, David Blunkett or Alan Milburn brought to their departmental briefs under former prime ministers David Cameron or Tony Blair. Likewise, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond’s job is to pretend that the Treasury foresees scenarios in which leaving the EU is more lucrative than staying. It doesn’t. Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s job at the Home Office is to pretend that her liberal instincts are compatible with her boss’s culture-warrior campaign against migrant numbers. They aren’t. Brexit’s ministers are compromised in different ways.
Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox travels the world in search of dignitaries to indulge the fantasy that he is a broker of trade deals and not a sleaze-tainted simpleton on a sinecure. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s cultivated dishevelment shtick is so hackneyed he looks like a tribute act to his own squandered potential. Brexit Secretary David Davis has a proper job running the Brexit department, but there is no evidence that any of his independent judgements will influence the prime minister. It is natural for May to demand loyalty from ministers, but the level of control that the prime minister has achieved in less than a year at No 10 is impressive and disturbing. It is a companion to her appeals for unity and respect for “the will of the people” as rhetorical devices for belittling dissent. Her personal ambition and the national interest are fused into a single project.
To be on any team but Team May is unpatriotic. This is not a model for healthy government. To make ministers dissolve their opinions into the leader’s prejudices invites sycophancy. It inflates a bubble of false confidence into which bad news and inconvenient data are not invited. It is literally stupefying: Asking clever people to make themselves stupid, repressing original thoughts in exchange for advancement.
To observe May’s cabinet is to witness a process of political domestication — the training of ambitious spirits into mental docility. It is the end of the age of big beasts.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Rafael Behr is a political columnist for the Guardian.
