BORIS Johnson has appointed a new cabinet after losing key members to morality yesterday. But who are they, and how has it come to this?
Chancellor of the exchequer, Nadhim Zahawi
A refugee from Iraq who came to this country with nothing and has avoided mentioning that to Priti Patel, Zahawi founded a polling company and worked for big oil before entering politics so he can certainly be trusted.
Zahawi was education secretary, pursuing a bold plan of waiting for a better job to become available, before throwing it all away for a doomed stint as a serial liar’s accountant. Claimed expenses to heat his riding school’s stables so very much a man of the people. In cabinet hoping he might end up leading a coup.
Secretary of state for health and social care, Steve Barclay
Boris Johnson’s brutal fixer who blackmails, breaks legs, and pays off victims now uncomfortably promoted into the spotlight – much as Putin’s former bodyguard is now his ‘emergencies minister’. Expected to bring bloodied baseball bat to front bench of Commons.
Barclay has fallen this far because of his unquestioning loyalty to the prime minister, in return for which he has already lost function in most of the important parts of his brain. Political career expected to end with the words ‘before turning the gun on himself’.
Secretary of state for education, Michelle Donelan
Spoke at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool aged 15, if you thought you were unpopular at school. Was universities minister when students were all ordered to go to university then locked in their rooms because of Covid and fined if they left, so a solid track record without a trace of hypocrisy.
Donelan has drifted down to the dregs of society like a dissolute heiress because there was nothing in her Cheshire-born MP’s life but despair. After hitting rock bottom will clean up like a substance abuser and go on an inspirational speaking tour.
Parliamentary under secretary of state for children and families, as yet unfilled
Position vacant after obscure incumbent quit this morning. Christ, you’d have to be desperate to take it.
