Ministers reveal the mysteries of the cabinet merry-go-round

As Ministers in Dublin wait for Enda Kenny’s departure and the election of a new taoiseach, they are also bracing themselves for that most exhilarating and anxious moment in a politician’s career, the cabinet reshuffle.

“After two years, you are sitting in control now, behind your desk, where you are really going to do this, this and this. And then the phone rings and the prime minister is having a reshuffle and you move on to the next department and you are back at the beginning . . . panicking again,” says former Conservative chancellor of the exchequer Ken Clarke.

Clarke is one of more than 70 former British ministers who have given in-depth interviews about their experience in office to the Institute for Government over the past two years. Now out of office, their candid reflections have been condensed into a report called How to be an Effective Minister – what ministers do and how to do it well.

British cabinet reshuffles happen just as they do in Ireland, quickly, sometimes chaotically, and seldom offering ministers any time to consider what they are actually going to do. Dominic Grieve, who was attorney general from 2011 to 2014, recalls that, as soon as he was appointed, a car came to take him to his new office.

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“Slightly to my surprise, I walked into a room to find the entire staff assembled, waiting to hear from me what my policies were going to be in respect to the running of the office. And I think I probably sketched out what I thought were the priorities for the law officers and for myself as attorney in about two minutes, having thought about it for about 35 seconds before I turned up,” he says.

Yes, Minister

Contrary to the

Yes, Minister

image of hapless politicians being manipulated by cynical, self-interested civil servants, the former ministers are mostly warm about the officials they worked with. Some complain, however, that civil servants often fail to understand that ministers can’t afford to neglect their work as constituency MPs. Oliver Letwin, a minister in David Cameron’s cabinet, argues that competing demands make a minister’s job effectively impossible.

“Ministers have to be very good performers in parliament, they have to be good on the box and on the radio, they have to deal with constituents, they have to find ways of dealing with lobby groups and interest groups, they have to run a department, they have to participate in collegiate discussion and carry the day and you know, it’s impossible for anyone to be an expert in all of these in every respect,” he says.

What makes the challenge more formidable is the fact that ministers receive no preparation and, unless they have shadowed the brief in opposition or served as a junior minister in the same department, they seldom know much about it.

“I had no training beforehand, no training after, no support after and I had a big, fat lever-arched file prepared by the department for new ministers, which I never got to read. I had no brief from the prime minister when he gave me the call to appoint me to the job,” says John Healey, a housing minister under Gordon Brown.

PM’s guidance

Although the prime minister is their boss, few ministers receive guidance from above unless they make a mess of something, or perform badly on radio or television. So they have to set their own objectives in an effort to ensure that they can accomplish something concrete before their time runs out.

Some plan a keynote speech a few weeks after taking office, focusing their staff on formulating a strategic agenda, with a clear timetable for implementation. Such plans are often frustrated, however, by the slow pace of bureaucracy and by unexpected events.

Regardless of the frustrations of office, few ministers want to leave it and only a handful make a graceful exit at a time of their own choosing. All ministers know the rules of the game and that they can be sacked for any reason, including an election defeat, but former culture secretary Tessa Jowell says the experience of leaving office is always a let-down.

“There are lots of frustrations in government, but there is nothing as frustrating as being out of government,” she says.