A bad reshuffle is worse than no reshuffle

Reshuffles are a moment for a prime minister to demonstrate his or her power. A PM can move allies into key roles and reward loyalty, or demote – or sometimes exile to the backbenches – failing ministers or would-be rivals. Some PMs try to balance party factions or promote different demographics – how many women sit around the Cabinet table and across the government is usually an important measure.

But repeated reshuffles are bad for government. So the focus ought to be about appointing talented people, and then giving them time to fulfil the government’s promises.

The next day’s headlines will provide instant judgments about the politics and personalities of Boris Johnson’s reshuffle, but he should be considering how well his new team will function over the coming months and years.  

If the threat of a reshuffle was good politics, it has also meant bad government

Number 10 has used the threat of a reshuffle to keep ministers on their toes and encourage displays of loyalty. It has given Johnson and his team a chance to judge who should survive the cull and who should join the government ranks. Smart politics perhaps, but by encouraging Number 10's briefings about ministerial insecurity, Johnson has prolonged the uncertainty that has undermined the government since last July.

The departments who keep the same ministerial team post-reshuffle can quickly get on with policy. Those who are handed new secretaries of state, or fresh ministerial teams, will need time to get up to speed. Ministerial changes mean adjusting to how a new minister likes to work and what he or she knows about the department. It is a task which can take months. Ken Clarke, who has been reshuffled more than most, recognised "the quite considerable contrast [departments] would encounter when there was a reshuffle and they got a new secretary of state. And it may be that the same party was providing the government, but you could have an astonishing change of policy when the new minister turned up, let alone style".

A reshuffle can be easily botched – and can damage a prime minister

The press will judge Johnson on how successfully he carries out the reshuffle. Ministers are filmed as they walk through the Downing Street gates, and their time behind the Number 10 door fuels rumours for a minute-by-minute social media commentary. Number 10 seems comfortable ignoring these kinds of instant media judgements, but when a reshuffle goes off course, it can have a damaging effect on how a PM is perceived inside government and within their party.

In January 2018, Jeremy Hunt refused to be moved from his health brief and Justine Greening turned down a request to swap the Department for Education for the Department for Work and Pensions. Hunt stayed put, Greening left the government and the reshuffle was branded a failure. Johnson is in a far more powerful position than Theresa May, but any demoted minister will weigh up whether it is better to quietly accept a junior role or return to the backbenches and start speaking his or her mind. Johnson will not want to end up with more people outside the tent than planned.

His team will need to avoid the shambles of past reshuffles – forgetting a minister, appointing someone to the wrong job, messing up the choreography. Number 10 will have the support of a Cabinet Office with experience of a record numbers of ministerial resignations under Theresa May, two changes of PM since 2016 and two general elections. Johnson’s first round of appointments after he succeeded May is a good benchmark. The entire Cabinet was in place by the end of his first day as Johnson brought in 13 new ministers and removed 19. But one slip up can dominate the news coverage and undermine all the planning.

This may be Boris Johnson’s most important reshuffle

With the next general election unlikely to take place for another four-and-a-bit years, this reshuffle won’t be Johnson’s last – but it may be his most important. His new team will initiate – and in some cases see through – many of the policies that the prime minister will want to show off to the country at the next election. Bad appointments – ministers who aren’t up to the brief or who don’t work well as a team – put that ambition at risk.

Number 10 has told ministers to spend their time focusing on policy and implementation rather than boosting their profiles on the airwaves, and Johnson’s appointments will show whether he really believes in this mantra. Ministers know which colleagues have been performing well and who is just a favourite or simply too difficult to move. Former Labour minister Jim Knight complained that the reshuffles of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown often failed to show "any kind of sense of managing the talent properly and really aligning people and their skills and strengths to where they’d be best deployed.” Instead Knight felt a “big frustration” as reshuffles were used to “promote and deal with the patronage and some of the sort of less edifying sides of politics.”

This reshuffle is a huge opportunity for Boris Johnson. Whether he uses it wisely or not could define his premiership.