Say this for David Cameron’s autumn reshuffle: it hasn’t unravelled as quickly or spectacularly as George Osborne’s last budget. Hurray for that. But nor has it been deemed a grand success. See Telegraph writers here, here and here for evidence of that.
If you want to make a difference – that is, if you wish the general public to sit up and think, By Jove, he’s finally got it – you need to defenestrate an admiral or two. A reshuffle that leaves the Great Offices of State as they were cannot pass that test. Which means, I’m afraid, that only sacking George Osborne would have made this a memorable reshuffle. Like Tony Blair before him, Cameron may yet regret not dealing with his Chancellor.
Iain Martin got to the guts of it with his characteristic faux-puzzled under-statement:
This Government is in a hole because of the economy. The Chancellor is about as popular as Fred Goodwin.
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