A reader's letter yesterday teased UK Prime Minister David Cameron for his reshuffle timing. "When," it asked, " will they cease slavishly to mimic the antics of their near neighbour?" We may assume he was joking – there is no typeface for irony – but he has a point. Cameron's reshuffle had the same election run-up rebranding calculation at its heart as Enda Kenny's, and less to do with meritocratic considerations than image, pollster and constituency concerns. 'Twas ever so.
In one welcome respect, however, Cameron, trumped Kenny’s “half car” shuffle – the promotion of women in droves, the “march of the women”, as his spin doctors had it, became the story of the far-reaching purge that has been compared to Harold Macmillan’s infamous “Night of the Long Knives”. The prime minister honoured his 2008 pledge to appoint women to one third of cabinet positions (the Tory positions). The Fine Gael sisters will no doubt note, however, how begrudgers among the disappointed were casting the promotions as “tokenism” – you can’t win.
The shuffle saw the departure of several "big beasts": William Hague from the Foreign Office, preparing for retirement from the Commons, the party's last-standing senior unapologetic Europhile Ken Clarke, and, most surprisingly, Cameron friend and ally, controversial Education Secretary Michael Gove, apparently a victim of the pollsters who told the PM he was showing up as an electoral liability.
The changes have also been painted as a hardening of attitudes towards Europe, and both Clarke's departure and the appointment as Foreign Secretary of Eurosceptical Philip Hammond, who has spoken of his willingness to contemplate a "brexit", may be read that way. But the appointment of Lord (Jonathan) Hill as the next British EU commissioner suggests a more pragmatic approach. A former corporate lobbyist, Hill, more technocrat than ideologue, is likely to get a senior portfolio and will be able to build without confrontations the sort of relationships and understanding of British concerns that Cameron needs for renegotiation to have any prospects.