Katy Balls Katy Balls

The strategy behind Boris Johnson’s incoming government shake-up

Boris Johnson’s first week back in Parliament did not lead to the type of fireworks many had been expecting after the Prime Minister’s decisive election victory. Over Christmas, there was chatter that Johnson was building up to a mass restructuring of Whitehall, a cull of the Cabinet and a reorganisation of the civil service. This was expected to take place in what had been dubbed the ‘Valentine’s Day massacre’ by government insiders.

Next month, changes are still expected – with a reshuffle coming and a reorganisation of departments. However, it will likely not meet initial expectations in terms of scope. Over the weekend, Boris Johnson met at Chequers with key members of his team and government officials to discuss the changes. In recent weeks, there has been a move away from culling departments en masse. Instead only small changes are expected when it comes to the Whitehall reconfiguration.

The reason? The key theme driving all of the mooted changes is efficiency – figures in No. 10 are mindful that while they have won four more years in office, four years isn’t actually that much time to bring about visible results. Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings has long been sceptical of the ability of the current machinery of government to bring about change. No 10 aides are already looking at to how to win another five years in power and in order to achieve that, they need to have something to show their new voters who lent them their support in 2019. Everything being discussed comes back to this mission.

However, there is a view now that mass Whitehall reorganisation would take up bandwidth needed for Brexit and other reforms. Central to the reorganisation are the so-called ‘red wall’ Tory MPs. The new MPs who are receiving the most attention and support are those who won in the Midlands and North – in areas that have traditionally voted Labour.

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