Gavin Williamson is here to stay?

Today’s Mail on Sunday reports we may have a cabinet reshuffle on Thursday/Friday and Dominic Raab and Gavin Williamson, men so incompetent that they paid full price for a DFS sofa, are at risk, but this piece is going to look at the former Defence Secretary who was fired for leaking national security secrets.

In most other eras Gavin Williamson would either never been appointed as Education Secretary or been sacked several times over, I mean who can forget the farcical behaviour last winter when in December he was threatening to take legal action schools who wanted to close early in December then he reopened schools in January for one day, but there is a litany of mistakes carried out by Williamson but sadly there isn’t the bandwidth on the internet to list them all.

However I do wonder if Williamson will remain Education Secretary until the new year. My logic is based on the fact Boris Johnson is very risk averse to cabinet reshuffles and keeps on kicking them into the long grass. Boris Johnson is oddly faithful to ministers in a way that he has never shown to his wives. Johnson didn’t sack Matt Hancock after it emerged that Hancock was hard at work and having an affair, Hancock resigned after the story broke then there’s the fact schools have gone back/are going back this month. The failure to vaccinate children during the summer holidays looks like a massive error.

Anyone who is a parent or can look at Covid-19 numbers knows our children are superspreaders and will likely see a surge in infections, the failure to make preparations for this is going to be problematic for the government so the government needs a fall guy so keeping Williamson as Education Secretary until next year makes sense for Boris Johnson.

Conservative MPs are revolting over Boris Johnson’s socialist policies to increase national insurance where workers in the Red Wall, the North, and elsewhere pay more tax to protect the inheritances and wealth of rich homeowners and their children in the South secure is going to make Boris Johnson’s life difficult and with the Vaccines Minister announcing plans for vaccine passports which is going to trigger another rebellion. Then there will be the eventual brouhaha over extending the Covid-19 regulations. Boris Johnson cannot afford to have a plethora of sacked ministers on the backbenches especially a former chief whip who was the campaign manager for Theresa May and Boris Johnson’s successful leadership campaigns.

Hopefully more will be traded in this Smarkets market (which is the only market that I can see on Gavin Williamson being in the cabinet market.) This bet will also pay out if Williamson is moved elsewhere in the full cabinet. The terms of the bet are quite clear.

TSE