Boris's trickiest manoeuvre

With the news that Boris is out and convalescing I’m sure we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. The latest polls give us a lead of more than 20% over Labour, and Kryten is spending his first week in the new job dealing with a schism in the party so deep it may split it altogether. The leaked report details the deep disloyalty to Magic Grandpa from the senior ranks of Labour officials, and the comrades have now convinced themselves that they could have won Disaster May’s vanity election in 1917 2017 had the Mensheviks and Agrarians Blairites and Fabians united behind the Bolsheviks Momentum.

Kryten’s troubles and Parliament’s holiday are giving Boris’s ministers an easy ride. And some of them are not doing so well. I suspect many are unable to manage their civil servants, and those unmanageable civil servants are seeking as much to cover-up and rationalise their past blunders as to solve current problems. It may be uncomfortable for ministers to face a grilling either in the House or in select committee, but it produces a better result for us all. The minister is really just the medium through which our scrutiny of the civil service passes, and the opposition are acting as our scrutators. So yes, Parliament resuming its effectiveness in a week’s time is in all our interests.

Boris’s dilemma is his gross personal popularity, behind which both his ministers and their civil servants will seek to hide. He must now manage the trickiest manoeuvre – leading a collective cabinet whilst leaving individual ministers sufficient distance to answer for their own performance. One or two may have to be swapped-out pour encourager les autres. A couple of weeks convalescence leaving Dominic Raab at the despatch box (he’s sound and secure in his job and can take the knocks – and is loyal to Boris) is not a bad thing.

We can only hope that the comrades manage to focus. The party is not exactly short of lawyers, and signs over the weekend are that they are getting ready to sue the arse off eachother over either (a) their anti-Corbyn comments having been leaked  or (b) their having sabotaged Corbyn’s leadership. sadly, their antics may prove more diverting than the real business in Parliament. However, we have the BBC and MSM to help ensure minimum coverage of Labour’s infighting in their partisan war of attrition against the government.