No one has noticed the most important part of Kemi's reshuffle

Telegraph

7 days ago

Michael Heseltine was talking recently to a Conservative successor – that's to say, to a man who now is, as Heseltine himself was once was, a Tory shadow Cabinet minister. 'During every single day of opposition,' he said, 'I went to bed with one thought only. Namely – how will I attack the Labour Party when I get up tomorrow morning?'
Ponder the applicability of those words, the best part of 50 years on. Then, the Conservatives had 279 Commons seats, not too far off the winning line of 318, and about 38 per cent of the vote. Now, they have 120 seats, their lowest total in modern times, off the back of a mere 24 per cent of the vote – the lowest share in their party's history.
Then, the energies of Margaret Thatcher, in whose shadow Cabinet Heseltine served, were concentrated, like his, on defeating Labour. The Liberals, as they were, had 13 MPs. Reform didn't exist at all. The SNP was unrepresented in the Commons. Today, Kemi Badenoch, must contend not only with Sir Keir Starmer but with Sir Ed Davey, whose Liberal Democrats hold 72 seats, most of which were previously Conservative, and with Nigel Farage, whose party leads the polls, snatched ten councils off the Tories in this year's local elections, and are poised to make further gains next year.
Furthermore, Heseltine's main means of communication to voters was three TV channels and a handful of newspapers. Today, his successor must cover a mass of channels, online papers, YouTube, X, TikTok and much more – when he isn't being run ragged responding to a pile of frantic messages in a mass of WhatsApp groups. In short, he must embrace his front bench duties less like work than like a religious vocation. Everything else must play second fiddle. Nothing else can get in their way. He must have, as Yeats once wrote of himself, a fanatic heart. Chris Philp, Laura Trott, Andrew Griffith and above all Robert Jenrick are among those who cut the mustard.
Other such MPs tend to be fairly new, with a stake in the future. Promoting them rapidly means upsetting older hands – a risky course to take if your position, like Badenoch's, is not completely secure. But not doing so means firing on less than all cylinders. There is no easy option – and, remember, most voters don't know who any of these people are and care even less.
So that James Cleverly, Badenoch's defeated rival for the Conservative leadership, has returned to the Tory front bench may turn out to be less important than the reported entry to the shadow Cabinet of Neil O'Brien – who will apparently take charge of the policy process. O'Brien, who entered the Commons eight years ago, is part of a clutch of younger Conservative MPs who have the energy, brains and skills necessary if the Tories are to be reinvigorated.
Others include Katie Lam, Danny Kruger and Nick Timothy. (500) Obviously, some experience is needed in the mix – which explains, for example, why John Glen, a former minister, has been appointed as Badenoch's parliamentary private secretary. And with the top three shadow Cabinet posts unchanged, plus Robert Jenrick kept where he is, Badenoch is walking on the cautious side of the street.
All in all, the Conservative leader has opted to shake up CCHQ and shuffle her middle-ranking shadow Cabinet ministers. Do her changes cohere? Probably. Can their significance be over-egged? Certainly. Do they pass the Heseltine test? The jury is out.