Damian Green was on the wrong side of Westminster’s culture shift

The current offensive on sleaze and poor conduct gave the PM no choice but to fire her First Secretary  
End of the line: Damian Green is the third minister to leave the Cabinet in three months
PA
Anne McElvoy @annemcelvoy21 December 2017
WEST END FINAL

Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

The week when most civilians are trotting around London with bulging shopping bags and even diehard Westminster denizens are discussing Ceta-plus-minus-plus trade deals at drinks parties might strike the cynical as being a good time to bury bad news. Such was the orchestration of Damian Green’s demise, at the behest of the Prime Minister.

Given the attrition rate — a third Cabinet Minister gone in two months — the calculation was clearly that getting another defenestration out of the way in 2017 was better than carting yet another personnel problem into the New Year.

The cautious language of the report into the First Secretary’s alleged misconduct could have emboldened a leader to conclude that Green was the target of an unedifying police grudge match and that the harassment claims were unproven (at least, as far as we know from the pubic domain). But she eschewed clemency and, as his statement makes clear, fired her deputy — a decisive move from a leader who has too often wavered.

The report was phrased to underline that claims Green consumed pornography on his work computer were unproven but that he was not straightforward about disclosing police inquiries about it. Ditto, it does not say he behaved badly towards a female journalist, while finding her account of being made to feel uneasy “plausible”.

But Sue Gray, the senior official who authored the findings, was nudging towards a conclusion with Cabinet Office dexterity. Based on her conclusions, unless May was determined to put herself on the line for her deputy, he would have to go.

As Whitehall’s director of propriety and ethics, Gray’s heft is in inverse proportion to her profile. As David Laws notes in his memoirs of the Coalition years (channelling a conversation with the grand Tory ideologist Oliver Letwin): “Our great United Kingdom is actually entirely run by a lady called Sue Gray, the Head of Ethics or something in the Cabinet Office. Unless she agrees, things just don’t happen.” To which we must now add: if Ms Gray reckoned a pattern of poor behaviour had got out of hand, even if it occurred before Green became a Minister, it matters. Short form: the slant of her judgment served up Damian Green’s head on a Whitehall platter.

Rightly, because when all the half-truths, excuses and what-aboutery is put aside, a major culture change has taken place at Westminster and Damian Green, for all his other strengths, was on the wrong side of it. If it seems particularly tough (others have surely got away with worse down the decades), that is because he was in such a prominent position. That brings risks as well as benefits, and the time for this sort of thing was well and truly up.

Green is an affable, bright MP, well liked in his Kent seat, a Europhile but not too annoying about it. He had mooched along under David Cameron in the slow lane of modernisers. May knew him for years (and familiarity rather than affection is the key to do doing business with TM). Those who claim they were especially close because they knew each other at Oxford miss a point: the Prime Minister is not really close to anyone politically. Green’s promotion was as much to do with elevating someone on the Left of the party who was not given much prominence under her predecessors. I am nowhere near as convinced as other commentators that Green was a trusted soulmate of the Tory leader.

The problem that his departure underlines is not that May will be lonely. She is — and that is in part due to her aloof character and in part a role that she is now playing up to (hence the “death stare” which will, I predict, move from being mocked to admired).

The bigger problem with Green’s departure is that it upsets the delicate ecology of Cabinet attitudes towards Brexit. These are no longer merely pro- and con. They range across the full Christmas selection box of hard, soft, and hard with soft bits and vice-versa. Theoretically, May need not replace Green as First Secretary, but someone has to be on the phone in the next crisis — and it is not going to be her spiky Chancellor.

So the role of official “Friend of Theresa” is up for grabs. The most likely successor by temperament and length of standing is Jeremy Hunt, owed a rise up the Cabinet pecking order, not least by virtue of surviving for so long and managing the sundry woes of the NHS without the kind of high-impact implosion caused by his predecessor.

But Hunt also has an eye on the succession — or, more plausibly, the role of future Chancellor. So he has adjusted his natural Remain credentials to Leave. Slippery, it surely is: Hunt would no more have supported Brexit in 2016 than apply for a voluntary amputation by a junior registrar.

But being bi-curious about Brexit is now a cunning hedge, enabling the Health Secretary to stay in contention for the top jobs whichever way the wind blows. In essence, promoting Hunt will be seen as a plus for those in Cabinet who favour a Canada–style, free-trade deal. That will cause more friction with Amber Rudd (an increasingly important ally as Home Secretary) and sympathisers, who are in favour of remaining close to the single market. The scorecard following the departures of Green and Michael Fallon is: two Remainers and one Leaver down.

Detractors will cheer. But sometimes a decision is the right one, even when messy complications flow from it. The real reason Green had to go is that at the end of 2017, far fewer excuses for sleaze are allowed and stronger light is shone on dubious patterns of conduct. It can be rough justice and, in Green’s case, it has been meted out by erratic means. But the damage to his reputation was done largely by his own miscalculations. That is why he had to go.

Anne McElvoy is Senior Editor at The Economist

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT