I don’t know if Dave’s sainted mother is still alive, but if so I doubt that even Mrs Cameron rates her boy’s chances in 2015 as odds-on. In all likelihood, he’ll be thrashed by the very people who created the mess he’s unqualified to clear up.
This means he ought to consider his options – as the old truism goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Obviously, Dave’s new job will have to be commensurate with his talents, and so far he has displayed but one: that of a cardsharp.
In my youth I knew a few of those, and even played against them without losing each time. In the process I learned to watch out for a few tricks, and it’s on the basis of that experience that I’m offering career advice to Dave.
He may not know it, but he already has all the necessary skills. Specifically, the bread-and-butter triple whammy of his future job included 1) stacking, 2) false shuffle and 3) false cut.
Picking up the cards off the table after the previous hand, the dealer would ‘stack’ the top part of the pack, making sure he himself would get four aces, or whatever else he desired. Then he’d shuffle the deck in such a way that the ‘stacked’ part remained on top and undisturbed. After an opponent’s cut, the dealer would perform the conjurer’s trick of keeping the ‘stack’ on top (I shan’t tell you how this was done, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for wanting to know). Job done; another fish is reeled in.
Observing Dave’s first cabinet reshuffle, I felt a twinge of nostalgia for my youth, misspent as it might have been. For Dave not only stacked the top part of his team, but also managed to keep it on top for all the shuffling, reshuffling and cuts.
The bottom of the pack was indeed shuffled properly – quite a few junior positions got filled with bright new faces. The newcomers will do the tactical day-to-day grind, and more power to them. But the strategic aces in the pack, department heads, have suffered little attrition.
Ken Clarke’s hush puppies and beer-stained tie were moved out of Justice, and the token conservative Chris Grayling moved in to mollify the restless backbenchers who still think themselves Tories. Perhaps now burglary will be reclassified as a vicious crime to punish rather than a psychological problem to treat. Also, there’s an outside chance that people who slam their door in a burglar’s face will no longer be arrested for using excessive force. All that is good stuff, but hardly the solution to our most pressing problems.
Then Jeremy Hart, whose transparently shifty smile disqualifies him as a cardsharp, has climbed up to Health, from his previous foothold as Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport. Now the very existence of that job is a telltale sign of state tyranny, something unthinkable when Britain was still a free country. Quick, who filled the culture post in Rockingham’s cabinet? Disraeli’s? Gladstone’s? See what I mean?
Jeremy’s last contribution to our cultural refinement was appointing Peter Bazalgette as chairman of the Arts Council. Sir Peter’s job application included such notable cultural achievements as Big Brother and Deal Or No Deal, so clearly such an individual deserves a broader canvas on which to scribble his obscene graffiti. If Jeremy applies the same personnel criteria to his new job, faith healers, shamans and other mountebanks will be performing heart surgery.
Hunt has already been, and Laws soon will be, promoted in spite of the scandals in which they were both involved. Dave knows he can rely on them – they’re unlikely to be caught by the wrist again.
Admittedly, by removing Baroness Warsi from the co-chairmanship of the Conservative Party, Dave left himself terribly exposed to amply justified criticism. After all, as we know, the most – only? – important feature of any cabinet is its faithful reflection of the country’s demographic makeup.
Baroness Warsi, for all her obvious incompetence, was therefore invaluable: she ticked two vital boxes by being both a woman and a Muslim. But, displaying the sleight of hand that’ll stand him in good stead after 2015, Dave merely shifted her sideways, immediately filled several junior positions with women and moved Teresa Villiers up to Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. No way Dave will be caught out, bright lad like him.
But his most outstanding achievement was to keep the stacked part of the pack on top. The economic cards remained in the sweaty clutch of George Osborne, Vince Cable and Danny Alexander. This means Dave is happy with the way his aces lie – he must be thinking the economy is doing so well that any change could only be for the worse.
Someone less adept at marking cards would think that replacing that unholy trinity with, say, David Davis, John Redwood and Stewart Jackson wouldn’t be a bad thing. And a real cynic would go so far as to suggest that we could do even better by picking three random names out of the phone directory, putting them into safe Tory seats (if there is any such thing) and elevating them to the jobs currently held by George, Vince and Danny. But Dave knows better.
I do wish him the best of luck in his future career. Dave won’t even need to buy a false moustache and a derringer to make the transition. His future is bright; ours isn’t.