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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nRC 1<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Prime ministers announce changes to government structures for one of two reasons. Either they are frustrated in pursuit of some cherished policy, or they are panicking that events are running away from them. Moving Whitehall furniture creates a comforting illusion of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Boris Johnson doesn\u2019t cherish much beyond the idea of himself as a figure of greatness, the safe bet is that his plan to merge the Foreign Office with the Department for International Development belongs in the category of gestural distraction. The rationale is that a hybrid ministry will more efficiently represent the interests of \u201cglobal Britain\u201d. It calls to mind the late Denis Healey\u2019s maxim that the moment to remove a man\u2019s appendix is not when he is busy carrying a piano up a flight of stairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of performing non-essential surgery on an exhausted government machine, the prime minister might more usefully bolster the UK\u2019s international reputation by competently handling a public health emergency and incipient economic crisis. But Johnson did not go into politics for the love of managerial capability, nor was that the basis on which he appointed his cabinet. The prime minister\u2019s departmental merger announcement in the Commons on Monday was drowned out by the screech of tyres on Downing Street, executing an emergency U-turn over free school meal vouchers. The choreography hardly advertised steady statecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The coronavirus outbreak would have tested a strong ministerial team. It cruelly exposes those whose all-consuming ambition for a top job has driven out any grasp of what doing the job well might involve. Gavin Williamson is the exemplar. I single out the education secretary not because he is unusually weak but because he is typically weak. The bungling inability to steer schools safely out of lockdown is his personal failure, but also symptomatic of an attitude to government that puts someone so likely to fail in charge of something so important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If children are not allowed to throng in classrooms, there is going to be a shortage of teachers and space. That was a foreseeable problem of logistics, not an ideological battle, which might explain why the government has failed to think it through. The Johnson administration evolved from the campaign to sweep Brexit unbelievers aside, and it hasn\u2019t shaken the habit of treating every problem as a hunt for enemies. That was the muscle memory in action when Williamson kicked education unions for \u201cscaremongering\u201d about the threat of Covid-19 in the classroom. It turned out parents were just as wary of the disease as teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Williamson is not unskilled in politics, just unsuited to the bit that involves governing. He is credited as the fixer behind Theresa May\u2019s confidence-and-supply deal with Northern Ireland\u2019s Democratic Unionists \u2013 not the noblest legacy but a nifty feat of political cut-and-shut to get a wrecked prime minster back on the road after electoral humiliation. Then Williamson got greedy. He fancied himself as a statesman and future leader, to which end he needed a big department on his CV. He was given the Ministry of Defence, where his inadequacies were exposed.<\/p>\n\n\n