The British Cabinet

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Lot to say here.

Let's start with the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Well I said that I believed that first impressions count with me and my first impression of Gordon was that he had the charisma of a brick and so it has proved to be. His back is against the wall now so like many of our leaders, he moves the deck chairs on the Titanic, that is, he has reshuffled his Cabinet.

Now he has 23 top ministers with a further 6 attending Cabinet meetings. By comparison the USA has 15 + 6. Most of the US titles are clear enough - State, Education, Defense etc - and so were ours once. Not now they aren't. We get things like Innovation, Universities & Skills, Culture, Media & Sport as well as the basics.; its jobsworth.
Peter Mandelson (the most unpopular politician in Britain) has Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform - a conflict of interests if ever I saw one. Harriett Harman is the Leader of the House of Commons, whatever that means. But she is also Minister for Women and Equality. Well try setting up a Ministry of Men and Equality and you'd get locked up. 'Equality' would have sufficed.

And then there is Baroness Royall of Blaisdon who is, no less, Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council, further meaningless titles. Never been elected by the public to anything, she is now a full member of the Cabinet and invisible to the public - what does she do all day?

Moving on to the junior ministers, you get to Baroness Vadera, Minister for Small Businesses ie 50 employees or less. What on Earth does she know about this? She spent 14 years in an investment bank (and we now know how clever they are) and then advised the Government of the day on the privatisation of the London Underground and Railtrack. Disliked by so many in the Cabinet office, Brown did a Mandelson on her and made her a peer and took her into Government.

I could go on all day about this but let's finish with just one more case. Huw Irranca-Davis is Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (ie No. 2) at Environment, Food and Rural Affairs + Minister of State for the Natural and Marine Environment, Wildlife and Rural Affairs. He seems like a nice lad though. Let's just hope that his mission extends beyond Morris Dancing, badgers, stranded whales and chucking rubbish in the hedgerows.

In all this, I am reminded of Bernard Levin, a great political columnist of The Times. Of the North Thames Gas Board (famous for its appalling customer service), he once wrote something like, 'I do not doubt for a moment that matters would be improved overnight if the entire Management Team were replaced by an office boy and a cat. The cat would be there chiefly to keep the boy company but it could certainly have run the financial side of things better than the present incumbents.'