Nights of the long knives: Eight staggering reshuffles

One of the periodic delights of the Westminster system is the Government reshuffle. Reshuffles are symbols of the Prime Minister’s power: while everyone else might go, the chief executive remains. Today, the grizzled observers of British politics were treated to a fairly spectacular example. David Cameron's pre-election shakeup, which has seen heavyweights including Michael Gove and William Hague demoted, has been billed (as reshuffles often are) as a "night of the long knives."

Every reshuffle feels significant at the time. Statesmen and women of the realm wait like helpless drones for the Prime Ministerial call. Political diaries reveal the thrill of a summons, the butterflies as our hero mounts the steps of Number 10, their glee at being told how they, yes they, will get to be Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Fish. And of course, there is the heartbreak for those who lose their jobs. Their greatest ministerial achievements—that trade deal with Upper Volta, the ingenious way in which they defeated a truculent civil servant in order to secure a new bypass in Melton Mowbray—have all been for nought. With a flick of the Premier’s pen, they are but a footnote in a doctoral dissertation.

In the midst of the gossip and scandal, some significant reshuffles stand out for the light they shed on our political system. Here are eight of them.

Ramsay MacDonald, 1931

The unfortunate Ramsay MacDonald remains a figure of hate in much of the Labour party, owing to his remarkable decision to abandon his own government and throw his hat in with the Conservatives. As Prime Minister in 1931, his teetering Labour government had to work out how to deal with a mounting financial crisis. The Cabinet split irreparably over whether to cut unemployment benefit. Faced with the collapse of his administration, MacDonald felt forced to create a National Government with Conservative and some Liberal support. He remained Prime Minister, but was expelled from the Labour party. A general election later in the year produced a massive Conservative majority. Former Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin took over the running of most domestic policy. Yet MacDonald remained in place, presiding with increasingly weakened authority over the results of this most dramatic of reshuffles.

Winston Churchill, 1942

Churchill entered office in 1940 determined to make the War Cabinet the main decision-making body in Britain’s war effort. It needed representatives from the major parties in key executive positions. Churchill’s mid-war reshuffle increased the profile of Labour members. Arthur Greenwood, Labour’s ineffectual deputy leader, was out. Clement Attlee, the future head of the postwar Labour Government, had the post of Deputy Prime Minister invented for him by Churchill. The Prime Minister also appointed Sir Stafford Cripps to succeed Attlee as Lord Privy Seal; when Cripps stood down later in the year his Labour place in Cabinet was filled by Herbert Morrison. All three men would go on to be vital figures in the postwar Labour Government which founded the NHS and expanded the welfare state. From 1942, they used their powerful new positions to test the policies that would go on to transform Britain.

Clement Attlee, 1951

All Cabinet ministers are obliged to either publicly support the Government or resign, and resignations on principle are vanishingly rare in British politics. Most private sceptics feel, probably correctly, that resigning would achieve nothing, as the Prime Minister would just appoint some other guy. On the surface, the resignation of three Labour ministers in 1951 was different. Aneurin Bevan, Harold Wilson and John Freeman ostensibly left the government over its decision to charge for NHS eye tests and dentistry. Historians now tend to the view the resignations as the result of a personal rivalry between Bevan and Hugh Gaitskell, the rising star of the Labour right. But the resulting reshuffle was an important one. The resignations further weakened a Labour Government already suffering the loss of some of its big beasts from Cabinet, and the Conservatives returned to office later in the year. (As a footnote, a 99-year old John Freeman is still alive, should he wish to correct this interpretation of events.)

Harold Macmillan, 1962

Possibly the only reshuffle to have ever had a real impact on public consciousness, the “Night of the Long Knives” continues to be wheeled out by journalists as a comparison with almost any significant reshuffle (the phrase's origin lies in Hitler's purging of senior figures in his storm troop division the SA). The image-obsessed Macmillan felt his leadership drifting after five years in the top job. His plans for an autumn reshuffle were thwarted when Home Secretary Rab Butler leaked the details over a boozy lunch with media tycoon Lord Rothermere. A panicked Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet, including the Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd, while Butler was kicked upstairs to be Deputy Prime Minister. The reshuffle, despite its superficial excitement, had little permanent impact. Even the careers of Butler and Lloyd recovered, with Butler remaining a lead candidate to succeed Macmillan and Lloyd becoming Speaker of the House of Commons. Macmillan’s position continued to decline and he was obliged to retire for health reasons in 1963.

Harold Wilson, 1975

In 1975 Britain’s creaking economy was directed by a Labour Government with a majority of three. Prime Minister Harold Wilson needed to strike a careful balance between the moderate Labour party and the emerging radicals on the left. Just a few months after his shaky election victory in October 1974, the notoriously Machiavellian Wilson performed one of his most cunning manoeuvres, swapping the positions of Eric Varley (Energy Secretary) and Tony Benn (Industry Secretary). Benn holds good claim to being the most left-wing Cabinet minister of all time, and supported radical nationalisation measures. By moving him away from industry, Wilson helped neutralise his influence on economic policy. Varley, meanwhile, was a well-known moderate who could be trusted to support the Prime Minister’s pragmatic economic agenda. It was a brilliant move, which helped stabilise the Labour Government as it moved through one of the most turbulent periods in recent British history.

Margaret Thatcher, 1989

Thatcher had a habit of getting rid of ministers she disliked; at the end of her eleven-year reign not a single one of her original Cabinet remained in office. By 1989, she was considering passing on the baton to a potential heir. She used a reshuffle in this year to replace longstanding Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe with a young protégé, John Major. Major had been a minister for just four years, and in relatively junior roles. Within months of his appointment to the Foreign Office, he had been further promoted to Chancellor. In November 1990 he succeeded Thatcher as Prime Minister. This incredible rise, which has few precedents in British politics, is a credit to how a wise Prime Minister can use reshuffles and promotions to influence events after their departure. Major dutifully continued Thatcher’s radical programme for another seven years.

Tony Blair, 2006

In contrast to Thatcher, Tony Blair never had much choice over his successor. Gordon Brown not only remained Chancellor throughout Blair’s tenure, he also exercised remarkable control over government appointments. Reshuffles were closely scrutinised for signs of the increasingly fractious Blair-Brown power struggles. By 2006, the Prime Minister knew his days were numbered, and the popular perception of this reshuffle (deckchairs, Titanic) is not helped by its particularly fleeting consequences. The high-level changes, including Home and Foreign Secretaries, were only in place fourteen months. When Brown took over the next year, he left only a single Cabinet minister in the same job they were doing under Blair. Nonetheless, the 2006 reshuffle did promote David Miliband to a full Cabinet position as Environment Secretary, and Miliband would later go on to play a central role in the final years of the Labour Government.

Nick Clegg, 2010

Nick Clegg is the first Liberal to choose government ministers since David Lloyd George almost a century before him, with the right to choose the Lib Dem half of the Government with only minimal intervention from David Cameron. As Deputy Prime Minister in the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government in May 2010, he thought he had assembled an ideal team for the five Cabinet seats allocated to his party. One of the brightest was David Laws, who was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury. But before the ink was dried on his embossed headed notepaper, the Lib Dems’ economic champion was forced to resign in a scandal which, delightedly for the media, involved both sex and expenses. He is believed to have been the shortest-lasting Cabinet minister in history. Laws’ career has yet to recover completely from this crisis, and the consequences of this reshuffle for the composition of the Cabinet remain to this day.