Digest: a Chancellor at bay, French presidential hopefuls and new mandarins
Rachel Reeves's future hangs in the balance—or does it? I'm unconvinced; plus some old familiar names gunning for glory in France in 2027
Once again, a few stories to touch upon lightly, partly to register my opinion—that is, after all, what I do for a living—and partly to highlight in case they develop or indeed spur any thoughts in other people’s minds.
The right hon. Lady will learn of what metal she is made
It would be interesting, and perhaps I will do this at some point, to try to track down the first rumour in the media after 5 July 2024 that Rachel Reeves might resign as Chancellor of the Exchequer. I suspect the gossip began in earnest after the Budget on 30 October, but perhaps it was before that. I never found her a convincing figure to the extent that so many people must have done: I say that with neither glee nor vindication, but I said in May, in June and in August in my City A.M. column that she and the Prime Minister would not restore growth to the economy, that they believed in an interventionist state and were uneasy with private wealth. In September I suggested that the rapid cooling of relations between the government and the business community was predictable.
Forecasts of Reeves’s demise are now everywhere, especially after her part in the catastrophic mishandling of the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill (which will go through the rest of its stages in the House of Commons this afternoon, with what you would be entitled to characterise as unseemly haste). A few days ago bookmakers were offering odds of 5/4 on Reeves being the next cabinet minister to leave office, and on Monday The Times examined potential replacements if she does quit the Treasury.
I’m simply not sure there is really that great a likelihood of her departure, or at least of her involuntary departure. What would Sir Keir Starmer gain, other than perhaps a mild dead-cat bounce? There would only be the possibility of a significant change in the government’s fortunes, both politically and economically, if, firstly, the Prime Minister was willing essentially to scrap his whole approach to economics as unworkable and failed, and, second, if there were a candidate to be Chancellor who was in important ways significantly better than Reeves. And I don’t think either of these criteria is fulfilled.
The government is committed to high taxation, high public spending, increased regulation in some areas and generous public sector pay awards, and has repeatedly backed away from serious reform of major areas of expenditure because it lacks the political will or support. The Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill was estimated to save something like £5 billion, not a vast amount of money on the government’s overall spending but not to be sniffed at. The string of concessions ministers felt they had to offer, including from the despatch box with barely 90 minutes until the end of the Second Reading debate, have effectively wiped all of that out and there will be no cost savings.
Growth is anaemic at best. Economic policy is not working, despite a year in office. So to dispose of Reeves as Chancellor only to have another minister pursue the same policy is pointless; nothing will change. At the same time, there is no sign of the Prime Minister admitting it has all gone terribly wrong and he is changing tack.
Nor is there an obvious Chancellor-in-waiting. The Westminster gossip-mongers seem to think the most likely candidate is Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and, as I wrote recently in The Critic, the “real” deputy prime minister. He certainly has more experience of Whitehall than Reeves, and I suspect is sharper and has a better grasp on policy; but in terms of presentation, an area in which Reeves is felt to be poor, he does not shine at all. Nor is it clear that he would relish or make the most of a move from the corridors and meeting rooms of the Cabinet Office to the unforgiving and relentless glare of publicity which any Chancellor of the Exchequer must face.
The other runners and riders are flawed in various ways: Jonathan Reynolds, currently Business and Trade Secretary, is dangerously lightweight and has no economics background; Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, already has his hands steeped in the blood of the current approach and has won few friends with a lofty and dismissive attitude around Westminster; Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has been a Treasury minister, although a generation ago (she was Chief Secretary 2008-09), but is stiff and dour on camera; those tipping Ed Miliband, Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary, are either high on wish fulfilment or simply crave a glorious death ride for the government.
There is no logical advantage in Starmer disposing of Reeves while maintaining the government’s current course. Indeed, it might expose him personally to (even) more obloquy than he is enduring now, although too much has been made of the idea that a Prime Minister who sacks his or her Chancellor will fall soon afterwards: for every Macmillan 1962, Thatcher 1989 or Truss 2022, there is a Macmillan 1958, a Wilson 1967 or a Major 1993. Of course, this doesn’t mean Starmer definitely won’t sack Reeves, as politicians sometimes act irrationally, panic or overestimate their ability to change events. But my hunch is that Reeves will stay, at least for the moment. Whether Starmer will abide by his reckless promise to retain her in office at least until the end of the parliament is another matter. Remember, we may have four more years of this yet.
(The title of this section refers to a remark made by Enoch Powell to Margaret Thatcher when the House of Commons met as an emergency on Saturday 3 April 1982, after Argentina had invaded the Falkland Islands. He spoke even more gravely and apocalyptically than usual, and ended:
The Prime Minister, shortly after she came into office, received a soubriquet as the “Iron Lady”. It arose in the context of remarks which she made about defence against the Soviet Union and its allies; but there was no reason to suppose that the right hon. Lady did not welcome and, indeed, take pride in that description. In the next week or two this House, the nation and the right hon. Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made.
After the conflict he praised her conduct as much as he was ever able to praise her.)
Legends’ tour: bringing it all back
The next French presidential election is still 21 or so months away, but speculation is consistently frenetic about likely candidates and results. This is understandable, up to a point: the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron (currently on a state visit to the United Kingdom) cannot stand for re-election as he will have served two consecutive terms as President, though it has been pointed out that the French constitution, unlike its American counterpart, places no prohibition on a former President returning to the office after a break; his previously most likely challenger, Marine Le Pen of the National Rally, has been banned from standing for political office for five years, which would obviously disqualify her from the 2027 presidential race, although she is appealing; and Macron’s electoral alliance, Ensemble pour la République, which anyway took a beating in last summer’s legislative elections, does not have an agreed or outstanding candidate to take Macron’s place in the dash for the Élysée Palace.
I won’t analyse every detail of the presidential race as it stands, as that will be for another time. All I wanted to draw attention to was the extraordinary number of what we might politely call veteran politicians who have expressed some kind of interest in contesting the presidency.
The top of the bill must surely go to François Hollande, as he is a former President (2012-17) and indeed Macron’s predecessor and in some ways progenitor. To the surprise of many, Hollande returned to active politics last year and was elected as a Socialist deputy for the 1st constituency of the Corrèze in central France. Last year he published a serious-minded book, Le défi de gouverner—La Gauche et le pouvoir de l’affaire Dreyfus jusqu’à nos jours (“The Challenge of Governing—The Left and power from the Dreyfus affair to the present day”) and some think his publicity events for the volume look suspiciously like campaign rallies. The man himself has ruled nothing out but had stressed he wants only to be of service.
Also circling the nomination of the Parti Socialiste is Hollande’s former partner and 2007 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal. She was the first woman in French political history to progress to the second round of a presidential election, and achieved a respectable result against winner Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2008, she failed to win the race to succeed her partner Hollande as leader of the Socialists, scored dismally in an unsuccessful bid for the presidential nomination on 2011 and was beaten in the 2012 legislative elections for the 1st constituency of Charentes-Maritime. However, she was appointed Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy in the cabinet of Prime Minister Manuel Valls during Hollande’s presidency, and ranked third in precedence after Valls and the <Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabius. Royal was disappointed not to be offered a ministerial post by President Macron, but from 2017 to 2020 she was Ambassador for the Arctic and Antarctic, before falling out with the President over pension reform. She has said that she will contest the primary elections for the Socialist nomination.
Michel Barnier, the shortest serving Prime Minister in the Fifth Republic who could only cling on to office for 99 days from September to December 2024, seems to have had his ambition rekindled when Emmanuel Macron, in desperation, recalled him to the colours last year. He had sought the nomination for Les Républicains, the successor to various centre-right Gaullist parties, for the 2022 presidential election but came in a respectably close but unsuccessful third behind Valérie Pécresse and Éric Ciotti. Although he is 74 and had a bruising tenure as Prime Minister, and has a cabinet career which goes back to Édouard Balladur’s premiership in 1993-95, Barnier hopes he can appeal to voters as an experienced, weighty figure, and has tacked to the right on issues like migration, border control and law and order recently. He gave an interview in April in which he made no formal declaration but conspicuously refussed to rule out another presidential tilt.
Another septuagenarian former Prime Minister with ambition still burning is Dominique de Villepin, who was premier under President Jacques Chirac from 2005 to 2007. A career diplomat who became Secretary General of the Élysée Palace to Chirac (1995-2002), Minister of Foreign Affairs (2002-04) and Minister of the Interior (2004-05), he left office when Nicolas Sarkozy assumed the presidency. De Villepin has never held elected office, despite rumours he might seek the UMP nomination in 2007; in 2010 he set up his own party, République Solidaire, to run for the presidency in 2012 but failed to get enough endorsements to be a candidate. Last month, he established another new party, La France Humaniste, in order “to unite all French people to defend social justice and the republican order”, and he is positioning the party, and likely himself, as a moderate centre-right political force: “Against a path of tension and identity polarisation, I offer one of assembly, public interest and humanism.”
Two other veterans of presidential elections may be in the mix: current Prime Minister François Bayrou stood for the Union for French Democracy in 2002 and 2007 and for the Democratic Movement in 2012, who has indicated his availability; and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise, a veteran left-winger who contested the presidency on 2012, 2017 and 2022 (the first time for the Left Front) and was a leading figure in the creation of the New Popular Front, a left-wing alliance at last year’s legislative elections.
None of these blasts from the past is currently likely to be successful. According to opinion polls taken at the end of May, the current favourite is the National Rally’s Jordan Bardella, some distance ahead of former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, whose centre-right Horizons party is part of Macron’s Ensemble coalition. Mélenchon regularly scores between 10 and 15 per cent but also has very high negative ratings. Hollande has seen ratings as high as six per cent, while Royal and de Villepin are statistically negligible on around two per cent.
Amusing folies de grandeur, but of no more importance? Probably, but in an election in which the first round could see a dozen candidates, predictions are difficult to make. In addition, French presidential elections can often hinge on which two candidates progress to the second round, and therefore how each candidate might fare in a series of hypothetical two-way contests. Traditionally, the mainstream parties of left and right had worked tacitly to keep the National Front, as the National Rally was formerly known, out of the second round of presidential elections, but the party’s founder Jean-Marie Le Pen faced off against Jacques Chirac in the second round in 2002 (losing heavily), while his daughter Marine Le Pen has been in the final two in 2017 and 2022.
If I were a betting man, I would say the next President of the French Republic will be one of Jordan Bardella, Édouard Philippe and Les Républicains leader Bruno Retailleau, but I’m not, so I won’t. In a way, any of those candidates would be an extraordinary victor, but we live in extraordinary times.
The Sir Humphrey shuffle
There has been a lot of change within Whitehall’s cadre of permanent secretaries recently, principally triggered by the retirement as Cabinet Secretary of Simon (now Lord) Case. I will look at some of the moves in more detail another time, but so far new appointees are:
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: David Hill (interim)
Ministry of Justice: Jo Farrar
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology: Emran Mian
Scotland Office (Director): Fiona Mettam
Department for Transport: Jo Shanmugalingam