Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Reshuffles can often make matters much worse

As with most reshuffles, today’s is being viewed largely as a test of the Prime Minister’s strength. Will she move the ministers who aren’t working well in their current posts? Will she underwhelm with what she eventually manages to do? Will she accidentally appoint Chris Grayling to another job for 30 seconds? So far, that test of strength isn’t going so well, with the attention largely focusing on deleted tweets and people getting out of cars.

It’s easy on reshuffle day to forget the impact that moving ministers around has on government. Not just in the sense that we can tell how powerful the Prime Minister really is as a result of the appointments she makes – and can’t make – but also because turnover causes delays in decisions as a new Secretary of State tries to get their head around a complex brief and work out what direction they want to take the department in.

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