Cameron’s quiet retooling of government

Has David Cameron weakened his hand with his latest government reshuffle? Emily Hohler reports.

Reshuffles that are intended to make prime ministers look strong have a habit of achieving the reverse, and David Cameron's is no exception, says Matthew Norman in The Independent. Failing to persuade Iain Duncan Smith to swap welfare and pensions for Ken Clarke's job as justice secretary and then having to give Clarke's job to "the first alternative right-winger in view", Chris Grayling, "shines a halogen lamp on the diminishment of the PM's authority". As for Jeremy Hunt's promotion to health secretary, the "brazenness" of rewarding him for "acting as his human shield" over Rupert Murdoch "beggars belief".

To be fair, the PM may have felt that what the Department of Health needed was a good communicator who could preside over the planned changes to the health service without alienating all the "powerful NHS vested interests", says Janet Daley in The Daily Telegraph. Appointing Grayling, a robust eurosceptic and "first-rate communicator", as justice secretary was an "excellent move", as was the promotion of Owen Paterson to environment secretary.

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.