Boris Johnson's five steps to survival after 'partygate' - Bernard Ingham
Has our Prime Minister at last seen the light on the road to Damascus?
If so, “partygate” will not have been in vain.
Evidence of mea culpa is contained in Boris Johnson’s letter to Tory MPs seeking to tap their experience and ideas and involve them more in the business of government through backbench committees co-ordinated by the experienced chairman of the 1922 Backbench Committee, Sir Graham Brady.
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Hide AdMr Johnson has also appointed Andrew Griffith MP as his director of policy, presumably as his direct link with backbenchers and to make sure this collegiate approach works throughout Government.
So far so good. Until the PM’s letter appeared I had never in all my born days seen such chaos at the heart of Government. Only the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 is a competitor for a loss of governmental control.
But Mr Johnson is not out of the woods yet. He has shown no appetite for cutting down No 10’s chaotic bureaucracy. Lord Blackwell, who chaired Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit, claims that the PM’s office now has 400 staff compared with fewer than 100 in his (and my) day.
It is also claimed that 50 of them are special advisers (SPADS), often greenhorns undergoing their political apprenticeship at taxpayers’ expense. How on earth – parties included – could they possibly achieve social distancing during the pandemic?
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Hide AdAnd to think that Margaret Thatcher tried to limit her Ministers to two SPADS each.
Even allowing for her policy unit of six or eight eggheads, No 10 is now a bloated Topsy and a veritable Tower of Babel to boot.
It brings a new dimension to overmanning.
This is not entirely Mr Johnson’s fault.
The rot set in during the Tony Blair/Alastair Campbell obsession with the media and the perceived need for rapid rebuttal of the new phenomenon of anti-social media venom.
It is no excuse that in David Cameron’s time I counted 53 assigned to communication.
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Hide AdMy team as No 10 press secretary totalled eight, including myself.
Assuming he is not overloaded, bringing in Steve Barclay, an experienced and effective Minister, as No 10 chief of staff makes sense.
I have long advocated the need for a substantial figure to advise Mr Johnson politically and make things work.
But instead of slimming down, he is combining No 10 and the Cabinet Office into an Office of the Prime Minister.
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Hide AdUnnecessary messing about with the system in a crisis risks more confusion.
Of course, Mr Johnson’s first two years in No 10 were hit by a pandemic that has cost a bomb. But now we are coming out of it, he must recognise the need for economy with a budget deficit of around £300bn. Incidentally, so must Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who has just found £9bn we don’t have to ease the pain of rising inflation.
So, what more is needed before we can proclaim a miracle? Five things:
1. The PM must level with the nation. We are not just horrendously in debt because of the pandemic but have a cost of living crisis. And Western weakness and Communist expansionism threaten war. Blood, toil, sweat and tears come to mind. It can only get worse before it gets better
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Hide Ad2. He must demonstrate his previously undiscovered commitment to economy by slimming the machine, curbing public spending and demanding a new efficiency in a system that lost £13bn to pandemic fraud. Concentrate responsibility in a few essential
hands.
3. To ease his passage out of the mess – assuming he survives it – he should recognise that the situation not only demands honesty with the public but ruthless action to at least delay vanity projects such as the HS2 and expensive levies of the “green” variety designed to achieve theoretical net zero carbon emissions.
If anything can be temporarily discarded in the interests of economic recovery, it is the obsession with greenery. Security of energy supply comes first.
4. Amid all this, he must try to fill the vacuum in Western leadership. Our very freedom is at stake if Russia and China think they can do what they like.
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Hide Ad5. Finally, Mr Johnson must take the presentation of policy and measures – and his own ad-libbing – far more seriously. He will not recover the public’s trust if he cares nought for what it looks like to the public.
If Guto Harri, his new press secretary, is a real, no nonsense toughie, he might survive.