It floats across the Channel like an end-of-reign smell. However, unlike Elizabeth II, who has served her country valiantly for more than 70 years on the throne, and is preparing to pass the torch to Prince Charles, Boris Johnson is under fire from the critics: he seems to have exhausted the solutions. to emerge with heads held high from a series of ever more embarrassing scandals and lies. That his days in Downing Street are numbered is no longer in doubt even within his political family. And if he struggles to stay in power, declaring that “not even a Panzer division could dislodge him from Downing Street”, his cabinet reshuffle would look more like, to take the dubious metaphor to the extreme, the twilight of Sigmaringen .
After the departure of five of his closest collaborators to Downing Street last week, including his faithful political adviser Munira Mirza, at his side for 14 years and whose resignation no one expected, Boris Johnson had to resolve to recruit and reshuffle its teams. Too weak to sass anyone, he is forced to move his pawns like on a chessboard and reallocate what loyalists he has left. It is clear that these new appointments surprised rather than reassured. And that he seems to have had trouble recruiting.
His new communications director, Welshman Guto Harri, told a Welsh news site upon his arrival that Boris Johnson greeted him at Downing Street humming the lyrics to Gloria Gaynor’s hit “I will survive “, and that they had “a good laugh together” and that the Prime Minister “is not just a clown”. For taking office as director of communication after weeks of scandals, we are probably doing better, or at least more discreet and more sober. Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon was quick to react: “When so many people are recovering from the trauma of the pandemic or are worried about rising prices…Boris Johnson and his pals laugh. This n It’s not funny, it’s even insulting.”
An “act of desperation”
Boris Johnson’s new chief of staff is none other than MP and minister Steve Barclays, former Brexit minister under Theresa May. An unusual appointment since the chief of staff is usually a senior civil servant. What made former chiefs of staff like Jonathan Powell say: “MP and Chief of Staff ? Chief of Staff is a full-time job. Will he report to the Prime Minister or to Parliament? This appointment seems to me to be an act of desperation.”
In government, if heavyweights like Rishi Sunak, Minister of the Economy, with whom relations are increasingly strained; Priti Patel, Home Secretary; Sajid Javid, Minister of Health; and Liz Truss, Minister of Foreign Affairs retain their posts, others change portfolios. The appointment of Jacob Rees-Mogg as “Minister for Brexit, Opportunities, and Government Effectiveness” won the prize for political oxymoron. This former student of Eton and Oxford, having had a career in finance before becoming an MP in 2010, seems to have come straight out of a Dickens short story when he was born in 1969. Very tall and very thin, his meter ninety forces him to stand a little stooped. And when he talks to you, he spends his time adjusting his glasses on his nose to the millimeter. Decked out in three-piece tweed suits since the age of ten, he still has the nanny who raised him in his service and speaks a language whose subtext only the Queen understands.
This Catholic Englishman who called his sixth child Sixtus, has no equal in firing sharp arrows at his political adversaries, but always with extreme courtesy which has the gift of irritating his interlocutors even more. When Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross recently withdrew his support for Boris Johnson, he called him a ‘featherweight’ and waved his hand at his insignificance. Anti abortion and anti marriage for all, it is also, as it should be, anti French. By deep conviction or by affectation, difficult to say. Last October, commenting on the French government’s outraged reaction to the Australian submarine deal, he tweeted: “The French are always in a bad mood in October. The anniversaries of Trafalgar and Agincourt must disturb them. ”
A keen observer of British political life, actor Hugh Grant, tersely summed up the general impression after this mini-reshuffle: “It’s what you call a dream team.”