Andrew Pierce says Graham Brady should be in the cabinet

After her triumph in Brussels on Friday morning and full steam ahead now for Brexit, Theresa May has been enjoying her best headlines since that botched General Election campaign and her unfortunate Tory conference appearance.

Who could blame her if she wanted to sit back and take a breather during the festive period — but she must strongly resist the temptation.

Once dubbed the weakest PM since John Major when he was clinging to power, she’s now in a stronger position than at her coronation in July 2016 and needs to exploit it by flexing her muscles with a Cabinet reshuffle in the New Year.

Once dubbed the weakest PM since John Major when he was clinging to power, Theresa May is now in a stronger position than at her coronation in July 2016 and needs to exploit it by flexing her muscles with a Cabinet reshuffle in the New Year

Graham Brady quit as a shadow minister in 2007 in protest at then Tory leader David Cameron¿s opposition to the introduction of any new grammar schools

Graham Brady quit as a shadow minister in 2007 in protest at then Tory leader David Cameron’s opposition to the introduction of any new grammar schools

First out should be party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin. He’s a decent man who hates the job. Put him out of his misery, Mrs May, and replace him with the most powerful Tory MP that no one has ever heard of.

Graham Brady quit as a shadow minister in 2007 in protest at then Tory leader David Cameron’s opposition to the introduction of any new grammar schools.

Since 2010, the MP for Altrincham and Sale West has been chairman of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs who wield immense power and can decide a PM’s fate before the electorate get a chance to do so.

On the weekend after the election, Brady met the PM and was crucial in her decision to hang on in there and fight back.

He’s been a rock to Mrs May ever since, and it’s time he was rewarded.

The PM should make Brady party chairman with a big Cabinet role, and give him the chance to be a new Norman Tebbit or Cecil Parkinson, who were lynchpins of Mrs Thatcher’s governments.

Not only is Brady a strong media performer, I hear he’d like to do the job. Remember where you read it first!

A loser in the literary jungle 

NOW that his profile-raising stint on I’m A Celebrity has ended, here’s a reality check for Stanley Johnson. The second volume of his memoirs, Stanley, I Resume, was seen on sale recently — in a branch of Poundland. 

Tory MP Ben Bradley has knocked seven-time winner Comrade Corbyn off his perch by scooping the Parliamentary Beard of the Year award. He’s the first Tory to win the title in a competition run by the Beard Liberation Front (really!). Mrs Thatcher will be spinning in her grave. She famously never promoted a bearded MP to the Cabinet.

Ex-Home Secretary Alan Johnson has no regrets at quitting Parliament this year: ‘I want Jeremy to win, but just as [Corbyn] was not entirely enamoured with the government I was in, I’m not totally enamoured with his front bench.’

He predicts a bleak future for Labour. ‘Jeremy and the people around him are part of sectarian politics, they define themselves by what they’re against and there will be more disruption, falling out and enmity within Labour as a result. We saw it in the early Eighties and we’re due a re-run.’

How right he is.

 Blairite Peter Kyle enjoyed one of the 2017 election’s big wins in Hove. He is now in the sights of Momentum, the Corbynites who want to replace moderates with candidates who espouse ‘radical socialist policies’.

Last week, there was a clean sweep of nine Corbynites elected to the Local Campaign Forum which organises Labour candidate selection for Hove’s 2019 elections.

Jon Rogers, one of them, says: ‘Last time anything significant happened in local government was when the Ken Livingstone-led GLC tested the boundaries of what progressive councillors could do with their positions . . .’ Kyle has been warned.

Lib Dem Baroness Doocey, 69, on sexual improprieties: ‘If any male peer touched my knee . . . I wouldn’t make an issue of it — I’d just call them a complete w*****!’ she tells The Oldie magazine. ‘I don’t think any female peers would take a blind bit of notice, but it’s a generational thing.’ Quite.

 



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