Sunak shuffle: strategic sense or rearranging the deckchairs?
8 Feb 2023
From a political perspective, prime minister Rishi Sunak’s predicted mini-reshuffle is either far sighted vision or a desperate, cosmetic rearrangement. It all depends largely on which side of the Commons one sits.
Over the decades British premiers have been fond of treating Whitehall portfolios as if they were outsized Lego sets; taking one structure apart or removing sections at least, combining separate elements to make something new.
It’s partly a matter of demonstrating one’s in tune with the zeitgeist. Harold Wilson pushed science forward on the agenda while murmuring about the white heat of technology. John Major created what became the culture portfolio, though he baulked at backbench mutterings and opted for the fustier moniker of national heritage.
Different times, different priorities; Sunak’s choices reflect his chosen narrative of clean energy, life science and innovation.
It will be harder for science and net zero to be subsumed by competing interests that don’t figure in the departmental titles
So those relative newcomers, the BEIS and DCMS, are pruned back and retitled, with the former now the responsibility of Kemi Badenoch, who brings her previous international trade brief into the new role.
Downing Street’s two new creations are Science Technology & Innovation and the Energy Security and Net Zero portfolio, the first headed by one-time universities minister Michelle Donelan, the second by Cabinet long-stayer Grant Shapps.
It might be said that nothing substantial has changed, stuff has simply been moved around. That, however, would be too glib a response. The cultural industries under Major and Blair gained enormously from their Cabinet chair (albeit underwritten with National Lottery cash); higher profile begat investment and clout. It will likewise be harder for science and net zero to be subsumed by competing interests that don’t figure in the departmental titles.
But… there are very large ‘buts’ too. Visibility brings more pressure to deliver as well as talk.
While Government tends to move slowly, the next General Election deadline will move all too fast for the prime minister
Where science is concerned (and by extension, industry, where successful science must scale up from the laboratory), there is the matter of those all-important research relationships: a deal with Switzerland may be pleasing but it does not plug the Horizon shaped hole of uncertainty created by Britain’s Brexit uncoupling. And solving the European research conundrum will depend on what happens not to the east of the Channel but west of the Irish Sea and the thorny problem of the Northern Ireland protocol.
Positives remain though: a massive commitment to jack up research spending by £20 billion within two years’ time, to be aided by Business department efforts to coax matching private funding; and a hefty chest of nearly £120 million to underwrite overseas research collaboration.
The latter was announced late last year by the then science minister George Freeman, who retains his number two status in the new Science department. While he did notably suffer the political embarrassment of publicly criticism for an association with PPE contender Aerosol Shield, Freeman does have a track record for commitment to the sciences, working for a biomedical venture capital firm before his political career began and having been appointed to his initial science portfolio under David Cameron, as the first under-secretary of state for life science in 2014.
Time will tell how much substance lies behind the appearance of change and focus. The only problem with that being that while Government tends to move slowly, the next General Election deadline will move all too fast for the prime minister.
