With the Conservatives ahead in the polls, David Cameron must be using the summer break thinking of whom to place around the Cabinet table. But he would do well to also think of what ministerial portfolios should exist at all.
Prime Ministers have the greatest leeway to reshape the government’s machinery upon taking office. Then it gets trickier as voters expect results, not tinkering with bureaucratic arrangements. A number of institutional changes are both needed and politically expedient.
First, a Tory government should create a new Cabinet-level Secretary of State for Veteran Affairs – with a department underneath – appointing a senior politician, or perhaps a former 4* soldier like General Charles Guthrie to run all veteran-related affairs.
Nothing would signal as powerfully that a new government wants Britain’s veterans to be taken care of. The new Veterans Secretary could then be tasked to draft a new Veterans Bill for the government’s first Queens Speech laying out a new approach to ex-combattants.
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