Not many leaders enjoy reshuffling their team. The gratitude of those who are favoured declines quickly and the resentment of those who are dropped sours at once. Friends are made for the time being; enemies for good. It is tempting to put it off into the always-receding future. Both of the main party leaders have been doing just that; reshuffles on both sides of the aisle are rumoured weekly but have yet to materialize. It is time for Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer to act.
The reshuffle is a brutal display of the power of the leader, a reminder, as Richard Crossman put it in his introduction to Bagehot’s The English Constitution, of the capacity of the leader to “liquidate the political career of a rival as effectively as any Soviet leader”. It is a means of changing the political balance in a Cabinet, a way of punishing poor performance and promoting emerging talent and an opportunity to show that a party can continue to renew. The more interesting reshuffles are those that betoken a substantive shift in policy or a party gearing up for government. This is what Margaret Thatcher did in 1981 in the reshuffle known as “the purge of the wets” and this is what a brave Sunak and a brave Sir Keir — if there are such people — would do now.
