Cameron shuffle looks good on dance floor

I DON’T have any idea what sort of dancer David Cameron is but his shuffle this week was certainly not of the soft-shoe variety.

It was more of a jack-boot and posh wellies stomp — more going to the barricades than the ballroom.

The newspapers and TV channels were getting quite orgasmic as the list of those to be turfed out into the wilderness grew, grew and then grew some more. For most of us, however, the list of the soon-to-be-banished was a list of the anonymous. Did you know, for instance who Nick Hurd was when he was at home? Or even when he was out spending his ministerial millions.

And how about David Robathan? I suppose he has an excuse for anonymity in England because he has spent much of his political career in Ireland doing, well, whatever he could find to do presumably. Maybe sampling and testing Guinness and the splendidly social warmth of many Irish folk.

And then there’s Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society (and no, I don’t know who he is and what he does, or at least did, until he was finally swept aside by Captain Cameron’s storm troopers). Is society any more civil thanks to the efforts of Mr Hurd? What do you think?

And who in Oldham had ever heard of David Jones (and no, I don’t mean the former splendid Oldham councillor or the singing Monkee of the same name) who is or was Welsh Secretary? And does this mean there is a Scottish Secretary and an English Secretary beavering away and doing nothing very much and doing it largely anonymously?

Next on this list of the highly-paid Tories on their way to the dole queue is Dominic Grieve, who has been carrying the title of Attorney General and has also, in effect been a champion of the European Union, a position which put him directly into Cameron’s line of fire.

In total, Cameron sacked eight male members of his Cabinet, all to be replaced by women, largely younger than the men they will replace around the Cabinet table as the PM sets out to show that, despite being a Tory, he acknowledges and appreciates the skills that women will bring to the Government. And not before time.

Women will present a challenging and different political perspective that is more about pragmatism than it is about beating noisy drums.

Expect a different political mood in the Government that puts people and families first and well ahead of political point-scoring and the cabal of those politicians who are in it less for what they can do than they are for what they will get out of it.

We are on the threshold of change and it will be a dramatic change for the better.