Adam Boulton’s fantasy cabinet

There is great unrest in ministerial ranks both in government and among their front bench shadows in the opposition. 

The County Durham police investigation may force Labour to choose a new leader and deputy leader before the summer break. Sue Gray’s report could yet do for Boris Johnson. If it doesn’t, the Prime Minister has long delayed a reshuffle “to strengthen his position”. 

Meanwhile, the transparent posturing by hopefuls, with Liz Truss, Ben Wallace and Jeremy Hunt in starring roles, suggests that senior Conservative colleagues aren’t betting on the “greased piglet” evading an apple in the mouth this time. 

Change is on the way: time then for our own game of Fantasy Cabinets, my rules. This is not the desultory task facing whoever is still leading the main parties later this year to build cabinets from the palpably less-than-talented pools on offer. A mere smattering of those currently striving would make it into the dream team I am going to assemble, drawing on the frontbenchers who’ve held the jobs, or positions adjacent to them, over the past forty years while I’ve been covering Westminster. 

My fantasy cabinet picks will be a non-partisan list from all sides from Thatcher onwards, made up of individuals who, in my opinion, did a good job both governing and administering at home, and earning respect abroad. Since the best Premier League teams now boast “full squads” capable of fielding two separate starting elevens, I will nominate two people for each job. 

Starting at the top is easy. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair are the longest-serving and most electorally successful Prime Ministers of the period. Each had a clear vision of the nation they wanted to lead and the steeliness to try to force it through. John Major was also transformative in a positive way but largely by embedding Thatcherism.

The job of Home Secretary is often a hospital pass. Many able politicians have wrestled with it. Ken Clarke and John Reid get my nod for having both the compassion and the intellectual capacity to grasp the enormity of the task. Reid had the honesty to find the Home Office “not fit for purpose” and to split it up.

For Lord Chancellor (a less troubling title than the intimidating Minister of Justice), send for a Scotsman: James McKay or Derry Irvine. Charlie Falconer, who carried out the Supreme Court transformations, was just a bit too politically engaged.

Chancellor of the Exchequer: Nigel Lawson and Gordon Brown. Also, joint winners in the Journalist-turned-Politician category. Long-serving and innovative finance ministers who presided over relatively good times. Chief Secretary: Rachel Reeves and Rishi Sunak both still have a lot still to prove.

The bar for Foreign Secretary has been lowered spectacularly in recent years, but over the decades there have been some highly able statesmen and women in the job: Cook, Rifkind, Straw, Howe, Beckett, Carrington. For my fantasy cabinet, I choose Douglas Hurd for his understanding of Britain’s evolving place in the world even if he never quite found the strength to promote it. The Liberal Democrat Leader Paddy Ashdown would have been bolder if he had got the chance of doing the job.

Sheer competence garners Defence Secretary for George Younger and George Robertson. Penny Mordaunt may have been a missed opportunity.

Norman Tebbit used to say that the best minister he served with was his fellow Norman, Fowler, because at Employment and Health and Social Security, he managed to turn his departments into non-stories. But “by Cwikey”, Norman Fowler rose to the challenge of AIDS. He and Jeremy Hunt, as much for longevity as anything else, are chosen for Health Secretary.

Norman Tebbit and Jeremy Corbyn share the role of Best Bogeyman.

Peter Mandelson and Lord Young for Business Secretary. Young is the sole recipient in my fantasy cabinet list of the best Businessperson-turned-Politician award.

Mo Mowlam and Julian Smith understood Northern Ireland. They are the only Secretaries of State to have had both the detachment and the interest to handle the complexities of North-South, East-West and internal politics. 

Scotland benefitted from the classy Ian Lang and Donald Dewar, Scots who were prepared to gang hame.

Wales: Rhodri Morgan and Mark Drakeford. 

Therese Coffey is proving a low profile success at Work and Pensions, just like Coalition Minister of State Steve Webb. Iain Duncan Smith brought compassion and fresh thinking to the job. 

David Blunkett and Kenneth Baker each were fully committed to really making UK Education matter. There are only two people who ever cared about the Culture brief: James Purnell and, the originator, David Mellor.

John Gummer, now Lord Debden, and David Miliband made sense of the sprawling and perpetually shifting Environment portfolio. Community is another brief with changing definition, the thoughtful John Denham and Michael Gove paused long enough to make a difference here.

To succeed the Leader of the Lords requires an independent grandeur. Margaret Jay and Robert Cranborne, now Salisbury, are my choices, with honourable mentions for Tom Strathclyde, Jan Royall and Elizabeth Symons.

Strangely Leader of the Commons often turns out to be semi-detached from the government, perhaps because occupants may be moved aside into it on, what the Prime Minister of the Day hopes, is the way to the exit. John Biffen and Margaret Beckett made much more than that of the job.

Deputy Prime Minister is ill-defined and goes on and off like a blinking light. For Labour, it intersects with the role of Deputy Leader. Michael Heseltine and, already, Angela Rayner are most impactful in this role — also nominated Geoffrey Howe, Harriet Harman and John Prescott.

Best Leader of the Opposition: the perpetually underestimated Neil Kinnock and William Hague, also the winner of the Politician-turned-Journalist award.

Best Leader of the Third Force: David Steel and Nicola Sturgeon.

Two unelected roles alongside cabinet are also members of the top team. 

After a long progress of distinguished civil servants, Cabinet Secretary is another victim of the Johnsonian degradation. In a crowded field from the past four decades, I would pick out Robert Armstrong and Gus O’Donnell. Only Jonathan Powell has ever understood the pompous US import of Chief of Staff. 

Bernard Ingham and Alastair Campbell are the prototypes of two very different approaches to Press Secretary. 

That is my fantasy cabinet list. You will note that I have reduced each ministry to a single encompassing objective. No DCMSD, FCDO or DLUHC alphabet soup for me. 

My “Ministry of All The Talents” is a time-slipping, cross-party fantasy which could never actually happen, even though most of the names I have picked could be said to share “centrist politics” whether centre-left or centre-right. 

The British political system tends to reject coalitions. The outsider GOATS appointed to Gordon Brown’s national Government Of All The Talents were widely mocked. Nor is the 2010-2025 Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition remembered with much fondness. The first British “Ministry of All The Talents” put together by Lord Grenville in 1806 combining Whigs and Tories, lasted for barely a year. Spencer Perceval, who was subsequently assassinated while Prime Minister, derided it as a “ministry of splendid pretence and pitiful performance”.

My team is not as diverse as I would have liked. This is mainly a reflection of the types of people who have occupied top jobs over the past forty years: inescapably white men predominated. Looking back from today’s vantage point, and irrespective of background, I can see many more potential ministers of merit in the past than in the smaller present crop. 

The options available at present are all the thinner because the present Prime Minister has conspicuously culled potential rival Big Beasts from his team and indeed from the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson feels more secure surrounded by second-raters or worse. After a similarly paranoid start, Keir Starmer now seems willing to let possible successors flourish. Let us hope that the imminent upheavals in political parties on all sides throw up some gems, who will be sure of a place in the Fantasy Football Teams assembled in 2042.