Just do the maths. There are 120 other Tory MPs from which Kemi Badenoch can select her ministerial team. Or put it another way, there’s about a one in five chance of any MP making it into the shadow cabinet and a near 100% chance of becoming a ministerial bag carrier. These are days of plenty for ambitious young Tory MPs with one eye on their own careers. It just requires a different mindset.
There again, not every Tory MP will necessarily want a place in Kemi’s team. James Cleverly very publicly snubbed his new boss at the weekend, saying he’d rather a return to the backbenches than carry on as shadow home secretary. He was fed up with having to defend someone else’s brainless policies.
What goes around, comes around. Jimmy Dimly might not be the sharpest pencil in the box but he’s one step ahead of Kemi. He’s worked out that KemiKaze might not be around by the time of the next election and he’d be best placed to replace her from the sidelines. All he needs to do is make sure he doesn’t do anything unintentionally helpful in the meantime and she will crash and burn of her own accord.
The former shadow foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell had also made it clear he wasn’t looking to sign up to the new regime. Though in his case, it was more about jumping before he was pushed. He was never Team Kemi and he didn’t have a big enough profile for the new leader of the opposition to try to find a place for him. To put it bluntly, he was expendable. So he chose to go with something approaching dignity.
These were the just the two we got to hear about. There might well have been several other prominent Tories out there who also decided they would rather do without the hassle of being shouted at or ignored by their new boss. Though not Chris Philp. Obviously. Politicians don’t come needier than the Philpster. Only on Saturday he had rushed to tweet a photo of him next to Kemi. “Please, please give me a job,” he had begged. “I will do anything. ANYTHING.”
But here’s the thing. Despite having a tiny gene pool of talent from which to choose and the best part of a month to make up her mind – she had been the odds on favourite ever since it became a straight fight with Robert Jenrick – KemiKaze has struggled to fill her ministerial slots. Just three frontline announcements in the two days since her coronation. Hardly what you might call hitting the ground running.
First to get appointed was Laura Trott as shadow education secretary. Mainly because Kemi had to have a shadow minister to send out for education departmental questions on Monday afternoon. A disappointment for Trott, as she had been hoping for shadow chancellor. There again maybe KemiKaze remembered her abject BBC interview with Evan Davis earlier in the year when she had no idea that government debt was rising. Even though she was Treasury No 2 at the time. Clearly numbers are not her strong point. Though no one knows what is.
Mel Stride got the shadow chancellor brief. On the surface, an embrace of the left of the party and a thank you for hours spent defending the last government on TV and radio when no one else would. But Mel isn’t quite as sweet as he looks. He had it in for maternity pay long before Badenoch got the idea.
Rather more disturbing was Priti Patel as shadow foreign secretary. Not just dim but dangerous with it. Twice found to have broken the ministerial code and once sacked for freelancing her own foreign policy in the Middle East. What could possibly go wrong there? If that wasn’t enough, she was the architect of the disastrous Rwanda policy. But somehow KemiKaze looks on all these failures as advantages. She sees Priti as a woman with a future. She must think the country has collective amnesia.
Late in the day, we learned that Honest Bob had been handed the shadow justice brief. You couldn’t make this stuff up. KemiKaze had literally given a prime job to a man she said a week ago had “the whiff of impropriety”. The message to the country? Granting planning permission against departmental advice to a Tory donor and pornographer-in-chief is the way to get ahead. Not to mention a shadow justice minister trashing the European court of human rights. So much for the rule of law.
Still, all this was good news for a Labour party struggling to find its way. Far better to have an opposition that is focused on making its own mistakes rather than on your own. Over in the Commons it was the mild-mannered farming minister, Daniel Zeichner, who was left to answer an urgent question on inheritance tax for farmers. Presumably the environment secretary, Steve Reed, was otherwise engaged on farming business in his Streatham and Croydon constituency.
Danny has clearly learned well from Keir Starmer. Both model their public speaking style on a rather tetchy narrator of a meditation tape. “Just clear your mind,” they insist. “Lie down and close your eyes. Everything’s going to be fine. Stop talking at the back.”
They want to put you to sleep, they want to be reassuring. They just can’t understand why you’re not taking them at their word.
“Look,” said Zeichner, time and again. The farmers didn’t understand the sums. The only people who would have to pay were the Johnny Come Lately types like James Dyson and Jeremy Clarkson, who had only got into farming as a tax avoidance policy. Everyone else had just let their imaginations run away from them. He may be right. But the farmers were going to need a lot more sedatives before they were convinced.
Then came the tuition fees announcement from Bridget Phillipson. All of which went completely over the head of Trott, who used her reply to demonstrate she had no idea of how student loans operated. So on brand Laura. Start as you mean to go on.
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
Taking the Lead by John Crace is published by Little, Brown (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
