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1. Cameron’s reshuffle

vsi1

By Simon Usherwood


Tuesday’s Cabinet reshuffle by David Cameron has been trailed for some time now, but until the last moment it was not expected to be of the scale it has assumed. As a result, it sets up the government to present a rather different complexion in the run-up to the general election.

The key factor in the scope of the reshuffle looks to have been William Hague’s decision to step down as Foreign Secretary. For some, this was the result of he’s being broken/bored by the work, but to have seen him last week pushing hard on ending sexual violence in conflict should give the lie to that. The reasons remain rather unclear for now, but the consequence is that the Foreign Office is losing one of its staunchest defenders of recent decades: Philip Hammond might be an operator, but he doesn’t have the same personal attachment to diplomacy that Hague has shown over the past four years.

If Hague walked, then Michael Gove certainly didn’t. His removal from Education to become Chief Whip isn’t a vote of confidence in either the man or his project for school reform: very little is coming through the legislative process in the next nine months that will require much arm-twisting. Cameron’s decision is very odd, given the extent to which he has backed Gove until now, when he could have cut his losses much earlier. Here the judgement might have been that things have moved far enough down the line that they can’t be reversed and that Gove is better moved out now to start building a profile in another area while Nicky Morgan picks up the metaphorical pieces.

Alongside these two big changes, a third individual was also pushed into the limelight: Lord Hill of Oareford. Jonathan Hill’s name is one which has been on the lips of almost no-one until today, when he was nominated as the British member of the European Commission. A Tory party insider, Hill has been Leader of the Lords since last year, providing with the skills of political management and coalition-building that Cameron argues will be essential in Brussels. His nomination also has the propitious consequence that there will be no need for the by-election that use of an MP would have entailed.

Beyond these three big changes, the rest of the reshuffle is mainly one of filling in the gaps created and rewarding allies (see the Institute of Government’s very useful blog for more). Thus several of the 2010 intake get into the Cabinet, such as Liz Truss, Stephen Crabb, and Priti Patel.

But what is the intent behind all of this?

There are two possible readings of this, one more optimistic than the other.

The positive interpretation is that this is part two of Cameron’s strategy, building on the radical phase needed to pull the UK up from the depths of the recession and forming a new team to create a positive shine to that work in anticipation for the general election. This is certainly Cameron’s own spin, trying to create a narrative that the worst is behind us and the strength of the economic recovery means we can afford not to think too hard about the difficulty that has passed.

Part of that strategy is to make a Cabinet that is more resistant to Labour attacks. One of the more-remarked-upon aspects has been the promotion/retention of women, an obvious rejoinder to the recent months of criticism from the Opposition. Likewise, Gove’s removal has at least some aspect of depriving Labour of one of their favourite whipping boys.

However, if we are feeling less generous, then we might look at things rather differently. Hague’s departure might seem less surprising if we consider that he might expect to be out of the Foreign Office next May in any case, on the back of a Tory defeat.

This is really the unspoken sub-text: that we give party loyalists some time in the political sun because it’s unlikely to last very long. Despite the tightening of the opinion polls in recent months (see the excellent Polling Observatory posts), the Conservatives still look like being out of power in May, even as a coalition partner. That puts a big disincentive on laying long-term plans and refocuses attention on making the most of the remainder of this Parliament.

It’s easy to forget in all of this that the Tories are still in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and that whatever electoral nemesis they face next year, that still lies in the future. Hence Cameron still has to temper the desires and pressures of his party to fit the coalition agreement, not least in his allocation of government posts.

All of this has echoes of 1992, when John Major looked set to lose, only to scrap through for another five years. Back then, there was a distinct sense that the foot had come off the gas and that the long period of Tory government was coming to an end. It was to be the questions over the electability of Labour that finally proved more consequential in the vote.

Cameron might not have had the long period in power that Major did, but he does have an Opposition that has struggled to impress. Even with the more fractured arithmetic of a party political system with UKIP, Tory victory is not impossible. That raises the potential danger that Cameron might pull it all off next year and then have to follow through.

If that did happen, then Europe is going to be the big fight, which will take up almost all his energies until 2017. Whether Hammond in the Foreign Commonwealth Office and Hill in Brussels will still look like good choices then remains to be seen.

Simon Usherwood is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics at the University of Surrey. He tweets from @Usherwood.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday, subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS, and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

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Image credit: Prime Minister visits Russia, by Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Flickr). Open Government License v1.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The post Cameron’s reshuffle appeared first on OUPblog.

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2. Turnover at the White House and a Crisis of Confidence

By Elvin Lim


The Obama White House has announced a series of personnel changes in recent weeks, ahead of the November elections. The aim is to push the reset button, but not to time it as if the button was plunged at the same time that voters signal their repudiation on election day. But the headline is the same as that of the Carter cabinet reshuffle in 1979: there is a crisis of confidence in the Oval Office.

The process this year has been more gradual but equally insistent. Two weeks ago, White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod announced his plan to leave the White House in early 2011. Last week, Rahm Emmanuel stepped down as Chief of Staff to pursue his political ambitions in the mayorship of Chicago. This week, we learned that National Security Advisor James Jones would be stepping down and replaced by his deputy, Tom Donilon. (Earlier this summer, Robert Gates had already registered his intention to leave in 2011.)

The biggest reshuffle has occurred for the economic advisors. Before year’s end, chief economic advisor Lawrence Summers will be out. Meanwhile, White House budget director Peter Orszag and White House Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Christina Romer have already left the administration. That means three of the top four economic advisors will be out by the end of the year, registering perhaps, the president’s general sense that he really needs to up his game on managing the economy and his particular desire to mend fences with (and via a few strategic appointments from) Wall Street.

There is much truth, then, to the Republican taunt that this is an administration in turmoil. This is a lot more change we are seeing compared to the Bush White House two years in. Chief of Staff Andrew Card stayed on for 6 grueling years; Condi Rice stayed on as national security advisor till 2005 before she moved to State; and even the highly unpopular Donald Rumsfeld lasted till 2006 despite constant calls for his resignation.

The contrast between this and the last White House highlights two profiles in presidential confidence. Bush may have been populist in style, but he stuck to his guns, whether it came to war in Iraq or his management of the White House. The irony is that while Bush was unapologetic about Iraq and Rumsfeld until at least 2006, Obama is already practically apologizing about stimulus spending and health-care reform.

Doubt is a good thing in the classroom, but it does not work in a boardroom or in the White House. If Barack Obama does not believe that government spending will stimulate the economy, then it won’t. Consider the Keynesian multiplier – the idea that every dollar spent by the government becomes income to some consumer who then spends a portion of it. This, in return, becomes income to another consumer who again spends a portion of it. This process is reiterated several times, and the sum of its effects is called the Keynesian multiplier.

Why hasn’t stimulus spending worked, as some argued it did during the Great Depression? Well, maybe Keynes and Hicks were just wrong. Or maybe, according to George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, the missing link this time is the “confidence multiplier” (or the fact that “stimulus spending” have become foul words.) Consumers hold back spending if they are not sure if government spending (i.e. deficits) can continue indefinitely, and even if they wanted to spend, banks are withholding credit because they are not sure if government would be in a position to bail them out when creditors default. Yes, confidence is grounded in real-world conditions such as the size of the US public debt. But confidence is also grounded in raw animal spirits. Myths as real or unreal as the dreams of our presidents.

If Obama lacks faith in his advisors, it must be because he lacks faith, ultimately, in himself. His faith in

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