Rishi Sunak’s Oliver Dowden problem

Margaret Thatcher was said to have once remarked that every prime minister needed a Willie. Given that humour was not her natural domain, perhaps she didn’t even intend it as a pun. The Willie she was referring to was, of course, the vastly experienced William Whitelaw who served as her effective deputy – and most famously as ‘minister for banana skins’ – for almost a decade despite being from the patrician and ‘wet’ side of the Tory party. Since Thatcher’s day, it has become fashionable for prime ministers to appoint an official deputy and that position is currently held by Oliver Dowden. But there’s a snag: Dowden is the wrong kind of Willie.  

Aged just 45, Dowden is very far from being the wise old owl to Sunak that Whitelaw was to the Iron Lady. In fact, he is one of the Prime Minister’s closest political friends and contemporaries. It would be hard to place a cigarette paper between them on any major political issue.