By
QUENTIN LETTS
The time for frivolousness is over as the grown-ups take over Downing Street.
LONDON — So
many flowers have been arriving at 10 Downing Street that the official
residence of the British prime minister must, inside, resemble a funeral
parlor. Well-wishers have been sending bouquets to Theresa May to congratulate her on being appointed
successor to David Cameron.
One Interflora delivery man, having handed
a pretty bunch of pink roses to the Number 10 doorman, took a selfie of himself
in front of the celebrated black door. He then did a theatrical bow to the
watching press corps.
Despite all this color — the heady scent
of success — the mood at Downing Street is less frivolous. The Cameron years
(he was in charge from 2010-2016) were broadly a time of optimism and zest. He
may have spent much of his premiership battling with gloomy subjects such as
deficit reduction, welfare shrinkage and Islamist terrorism but “Sunshine Dave”
was incorrigibly upbeat. Like the crucifixion victims at the end of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, he took the view “always look on the
bright side of life.”
May is a different
proposition. Please don’t call her dreary; nor would “glum” be quite the word. But
Britain’s new head of government is a tough old bird, a chewy customer, dry
biscuit — or, to use an expression popular at present with Westminster
commentators, “a grown-up.”
This is true in at least the factual
sense. At 59, May is the oldest person to have landed the top job in British
politics since 64-year-old James Callaghan took power in 1976. Tony Blair and
Cameron were both 43 when they made it into No 10, testosterone still bursting
out of their jeans, swank in their swagger.
What does age do to a politician, or to
any of us? It perhaps teaches us not to be so idealistic or impressed by
fashion. There may be some old fools in the world, but the years usually tame
one’s naivety. Photographs of Blair and Cameron at the start of their
party-leadership periods show wet-faced Berties, certain they could change the
world. Blair thought he could tame Rupert Murdoch. Cameron went off to the
Artic Circle to “hug
a husky.” May
just quietly announced that she would not be announcing policy on Twitter.
She bears the more dog-eyed,
hunched-shoulder aspect of someone who knows that life will soon kick
us in the shins. We should not expect the May
years to be a time of vivid declarations of intent. Blair, within days of settling himself in No 10, said his government would
pursue an “ethical foreign policy” (six years
later he took his country to war in Iraq). Cameron
spoke of creating a “Big Society,” a concept airier than a decent sponge cake. It will be something of a relief to the British
people if May spares us any of the prophet’s vision
baloney and simply ensures the sewers remain unblocked and the buses run on time.
Youngsters,
like Prince Hal with Falstaff and company, often like to surround themselves
with cronies. May is more of a loner. For her party chairman she appointed a gruff
former coal miner, Patrick McLoughlin. Cameron had given that job to his
university chum and tennis partner Andrew Feldman.
Out went most of Cameron’s Etonians. May
carried out an unexpectedly brutal reshuffle of the Conservative front bench.
There was no place for George Osborne, the former chancellor. May coldly
calculated that he had been rejected by the electorate in the Brexit
referendum. There was no room for sentimentality to the colleague with whom she
had worked quite closely for six years. Death to George!
On the
domestic front, Downing Street will no longer resound to playful squeals. The
Camerons had a young family but the Mays are childless. May’s Woody
Allen-lookalike husband Philip is not as photogenic as clothes-horse Samantha
Cameron. One enduring image of boho-chic Mrs. Cameron, taken after the May 2015
general election win, was of her whizzing along Downing Street on a toy
scooter. Philip May, standing near his wife while she made a speech after her
appointment, was a portrait of brick-like stoicism.
* * *
May’s ministerial appointments — with
one remarkable exception — have been monochrome, favoring experience and age
over novelty, pragmatism over image. The new chancellor of the exchequer,
Philip Hammond, is a creature of almost heroic dullness. You will find oxidized
Etruscan coins with greater sparkle. But there may lie his very strength. The
financial markets crave stability and “Spreadsheet Phil” could be just the man
to provide it.
The minister in charge of Brexit, David
Davis, is 67 and was last in government in the mid 1990s. During the EU
referendum he was a campaigner for Leave, but his speeches were so restrained,
they felt less like political events and more like an accountant’s quarterly
report to the board. May could have opted for some thruster, some trendy
representative of 21st century Cool Britannia, but she chose Davis with his
broken nose, his heavily sugared tea and his pie charts.
May also
dispensed with the brilliant (but demonstrably untrustworthy) Michael Gove and
instead promoted to the cabinet such low-wattage figures as Damian Green and
James Brokenshire (you will not have heard of them and it will probably stay
that way). Culture Secretary John Whittingdale, whose exotic love life had been
plastered all over the tabloid newspapers, was replaced by Karen Bradley, a
provincial tax specialist of impeccable stolidity.
Is there a danger in this drabness?
Western politics at present has a problem connecting to the public. The soap
opera of politics can generate interest — and thus a sense of democratic
involvement — in the electorate. All of which goes to explain what, to some observers,
has been the most baffling of May’s decisions: to make Boris Johnson her
foreign secretary.
Bonking Boris, the man who compared Hillary
Clinton to a sadistic mental-asylum nurse, the man with the untidiest hairdo in
Christendom, the man who got stuck on the zip wire! How can he possibly occupy
so great a position in the counsels of “grown-up” Theresa? Simple. He is there
to cheer everyone up. He is there to provide the comic relief. Every great
drama needs its jester. That will be Boris’s role and he will perform it
brilliantly.
Quentin Letts writes for the Daily Mail.
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