Michael Howard's shadow Cabinet balancing act is too clever by half. Yes, there's obviously a point in slimming the thing down to focus on a few big hitters. But as Peter Riddell rightly says in the Times, once it gets down to practicalities it descends into confusion. Who exactly is going to speak for the Tories on education and health? Tim Collins, education spokesman, and Andrew Lansley, health spokesman? Or Tim Yeo, education and health spokesman, the only one of the three actually in the shadow Cabinet?

The government's claim that Howard has thus downgraded these vital areas is also hard to gainsay. Both health and education are enormous and exceptionally difficult subjects. The Tories have never grasped the depth and scale of the education disaster (thank goodness the useless Damien Green has been booted out). To understand what has gone wrong in each of them, and then to devise the remedy, requires two formidable brains. On his past record as a failed and discredited minister, Tim Yeo doesn't even have one formidable brain. Nor is he likely to be sympathetic to the underlying direction (albeit muddled and opportunistic) in which the Tories have been going towards patient and parent leverage. This now needs to be developed boldy and coherently. It is difficult to envisage Yeo rising to this task.

Howard has shown he has listened to the worries within the upper reaches of the party that he was falling into the clutches of the Portillistas. Most notably, Francis Maude -- who was expected to be rewarded with a plum post for swinging the libertine tendency behind him -- remains on the back benches. Moving Oliver Letwin -- the economic hardliner but social liberal -- to be shadow Chancellor, and David Davis -- the social conservative -- to be shadow Home Secretary, defends the real middle ground. So much is welcome.

But Yeo is the most significant weak link in the team, because health and education are the prime domestic battlegrounds. And as for Teresa May at transport, where no doubt she will repeat her previous performance in that post -- well, what can one do except cover one's ears and hope it all goes away?

Posted by melanie at November 11, 2003