Andrew Mitchell, deputy foreign secretary

A mini-reshuffle included Andrew Mitchell being named "deputy foreign secretary", to some Westminster bubble amusement: but are we too cynical?

The commentariat hadn’t been expecting a reshuffle in the ministerial ranks, however minor, so news on Friday afternoon that Graham Stuart was stepping down as minister of state for energy security and net zero was a surprise. His resignation letter referred to wanting to campaign on local issues, though at the last election he had a majority of 20,448 in his Yorkshire constituency of Beverley and Holderness, so the Conservatives would be plumbing real depths if he were to be unseated by the Labour Party. In his response, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, made appropriately sympathetic noises, noting “These jobs are all-consuming and you have served in government almost continuously since 2016”. Sunak, of course, was only elected to Parliament the year before that, in 2015.

It is presentationally awkward that there are more changes in government only three weeks after James Heappey and Robert Halfon stepped down from positions at the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Education, though in their cases both are also leaving the House of Commons at the election. Irrespective of their personal qualities, none of these individually is a huge blow to the government, but they accumulate to form a sense of decay. If nothing else, they suggest that Downing Street lacks the authority to impose some discipline and forward planning on other departments and ministers, and is instead at the mercy of events.

Stuart’s departure has quickly been accommodated. Justin Tomlinson, formerly a minister at the Department for Work and Pensions from 2015 to 2016 and 2018 to 2021, has been resurrected from the backbenches to replace Stuart at DESNZ, while Mims Davies, minister for disabled people, has been promoted from parliamentary under-secretary of state to minister of state but retains the same portfolio.

A final element in the announcement from Number 10 Downing Street was this: “The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP has also been given the honorific title of Deputy Foreign Secretary”. Mitchell, a veteran of 68 who was a minister in John Major’s government, has been a minister of state at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office since October 2022, responsible for Africa and international development. (He was previously international development secretary 2010-12.) He attends cabinet, though is not a full member, and since Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton’s appointment as foreign secretary last November has been the senior FCDO minister in the House of Commons.

Natural British cynicism, combined with the fact that it is the last Friday of recess, has meant that Mitchell’s “honorific title” has been greeted with some amused scorn. Andrew McDonald, writing Politico’s London Playbook newsletter, described it as “definitely a real thing and not a made up role”, while Guido Fawkes reported archly that the government “invents” the title for Mitchell. The motivation for the appointment is not clear, and the choice of words in the press release, “given the honorific title”, is unhelpful, as it could be read as playing down the importance of the role.

There is an echo, perhaps only a minor one, of Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 reshuffle which removed Sir Geoffrey Howe, very much against his will, from the Foreign Office. He was moved to become lord president of the Council and leader of the House of Commons, an important role but without the power of a major department, and agreed to the change only if he was also deputy prime minister. To this Thatcher consented, but it was heavily qualified. In deference to Buckingham Palace and the sovereign’s freedom to choose the head of government, the formulation “Sir Geoffrey will act as Deputy Prime Minister” was used instead of simply calling Howe deputy prime minister. To finish the job, Thatcher’s brutally pugnacious press secretary, Bernard Ingham, briefed the media in straightforward terms that this was a title rather than a role, and would have no executive or operational meaning.

It is not at all clear that Downing Street intends Mitchell’s title to have no meaning. The accusation by Guido Fawkes that it is “invented” is slightly peculiar: all titles are to some extent invented, unless this is supposed to mean that it is an innovation, something conjured anew from the air. If so, that is neither fair nor wholly accurate. The last time a peer was foreign secretary, during Lord Carrington’s tenure from 1979 to 1982, a second cabinet minister (holding the office of lord privy seal) was appointed to represent the FCO in the House of Commons, and Sir Ian Gilmour (1979-81) and Humphrey Atkins (1981-82) were both sometimes described, albeit unofficially, as “deputy foreign secretary”. The usage, cited in The Sunday Times, was even repeated in the House of Commons and recorded in Hansard.

Functionally, the title is reflective of reality. Mitchell is clearly the most senior member of the FCDO ministerial team after the secretary of state, being the longest serving in parliamentary terms, the most experienced in front-bench positions and, while his fellow minister of state Anne-Marie Trevelyan was also a cabinet minister and, briefly, international development secretary, he served at the highest level for longer. He attends cabinet as an additional minister and speaks for the department in general terms in the Commons. So designating him as “deputy foreign secretary” seems simply to say out loud what is largely true.

The title may also be a modest attempt to mitigate some of the criticism that greeted Cameron’s appointment as foreign secretary in the House of Lords, and the supposed lack of scrutiny by the House of Commons this entails. (For what it’s worth, I don’t subscribe to this argument: the FCDO has four other ministers in the Commons, Cameron will appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee, and scrutiny is undertaken holistically by both houses. But that is an argument for another day.)

As it happens, I have thought before that there would be some value in departments regularly nominating one of their junior ministers as “deputy” to the secretary of state. My recollection is that this practice has sometimes been recorded in the annual lists of ministerial responsibilities in Dods Parliamentary Companion, though not systematically or consistently. The residual bureaucrat in me think this would be good contingency planning and would provide a clear chain of command. I can see some circumstances under which it might not be appropriate; functionally, if ministers of state have very distinct portfolios, it may be difficult to give one additional authority over the other’s responsibilities. On a more political and personal level, a prime minister or a departmental chief might not wish one junior minister to be clearly senior to the others. “Creative tension” and “constructive ambiguity” are management techniques often deployed in Whitehall.

In the end, this is not hugely important. Unless there is an electoral reverse of historic and seismic proportions, there will be a new government in the next six months or so and Mitchell will vacate his office. He is currently shadowed by Lisa Nandy, and Sir Keir Starmer has stepped back somewhat from his commitment to reverse the 2020 merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office so a new junior minister may well take control of the development portfolio.

It will be interesting to see if the “honorific title” of deputy foreign secretary survives a transition to another government, or if the concept spreads to other departments. It is a feature of the institutions of British government that one-off innovations sometimes become more frequent or even permanent. Titles are especially attractive to prime ministers when appointing governments, as they are highly prized but, for the donor, entirely free.

The office of deputy prime minister has been a case in point. Until 1997, or perhaps 1995, it was treated with caution, and regarded as of dubious official standing. There are vigorous academic debates about which figures should be included in lists of deputy prime ministers, and which merely carried out the role de facto. Since the appointments of Michael Heseltine in 1995 and then John Prescott in 1997, however, there has been an official deputy prime minister more often than not, with the post only vacant from 2007 to 2010 and then from 2015 to 2021. Even in that latter period, Damian Green (first secretary of state, 2017) and David Lidington (chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 2018-19) were both regularly described as, and acted as, Theresa May’s effective deputy.

As a final thought, I just wonder if political obsessives—into which category I freely confess that I fall—reach too easily for sardonic cynicism when reacting to news. Perhaps it is just the temper of the times: there is a sense of fatigue and disenchantment about politics, as a long-serving government wobbles wearily and its likely successor fails to generate much electricity. So it is understandable that we are tempted to see Mitchell’s new designation as a bauble or an aggrandising sop. But it is an instinct of which she should at least be conscious, even if we don’t suppress it. We should never lose an ability to be detached and dispassionate, to see through some of the artificiality of politics, but if we bring nothing else but cynicism to our analysis, it will be corrosive and diminish the whole business of public life.

So may the deputy foreign secretary enjoy his weekend basking in the glory of his new honorific, and we will see what it means in the weeks to come.