The reshuffle announcements keep rolling miserably on, with Theresa May congratulating herself on people bothering to answer the phone to her. One of the new appointments is rather odd.
Anne Milton has had a promotion from the whips’ office to the Education Department, which must be flattering for the sharp Guildford MP. But it’s not clear why May has done it.
The best whips are the ones you don’t notice, and few outside Tory circles will have had much of an idea of how Milton works. But she is one of the most effective and respected whips in the party. This is valuable to any Prime Minister but especially to one who has managed to exhaust, infuriate and weaken her party in one fell swoop.
Someone like Milton fighting for her in the parliamentary trenches is surely what Theresa May needs right now. As a whip, Milton was known for mixing blunt no-nonsense with compassion in the way that only a former nurse can really do. She is capable of giving a naughty MP a deeply painful bollocking and an overly confident colleague a wickedly funny put-down but also of helping fellow colleagues through the darkest of times.
Indeed, Milton is responsible for giving the Tory whips’ office more of a pastoral focus. She realised that the life of a parliamentarian is gilded and privileged in so many ways but also lonely, stressful and disorientating in many others. MPs are highly prone to mental health problems, relationship breakdown (whose relationship wouldn’t suffer when you are at different ends of the country for half the week?) and addictions, especially to the cheap alcohol that flows through Westminster during the working week. Yet neither whips nor the House had paid much heed to the damage these problems can cause, both to the individuals concerned and to their ability to do their jobs well. Milton set up proper structures to help her colleagues, and so many are grateful.
As good as she will be as an Education Minister, Milton is also an odd loss to the whips’ office at a time when Theresa May would surely want to do everything to make sure her party is as content and peaceful as possible.
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