Contrite. Heartbroken. When King Charles shed a tear at his mother’s funeral, it wasn’t because he was moved by the poetry with which Liz Truss read the lesson. Or even the solemnity of the occasion. What had upset him so deeply was the funny message from Kwasi Kwarteng informing him that Gavin Williamson had been left off the guest list by Wendy Morton. Thank God the Queen was no longer alive to see one of her oldest friends “pressed”. Few knew how close the Queen and Gav were. Few even knew that they were on the phone every day to fight over personnel matters. Who bullied whom. Something like that. The two had met when Gav had come to Sandringham to sell the Queen a new fireplace. One of the ever popular Elizabethan series. The Queen was the first to write to congratulate him when he then won Fireplace Salesman of the Year in 2007 and the pair have been inseparable ever since. The Queen had even decided to give Gav the coveted trophy again the following year. The first time a fireplace retailer has won the award for many years. Stay with the winners! Liz had. After that, the relationship had just developed naturally. The Queen hadn’t quite seen why Gav needed to be sacked as Defense Secretary for leaking National Security Council briefings. Surely they were just picking him for his relaxed and pleasant manner. Nor could he understand why he was also sacked as education secretary just for making a complete mess of the exam system. Still, it was the proudest day of her life when she finally knighted him. Get up, Mr. Gav. The King thought back to his last conversation with his mother. How she had begged him to intercede with whoever happened to be prime minister that week – even she was struggling to keep up – to vindicate Gav. The least he deserved was another cabinet job. Even if no one, including Gav, really knew what to do. The royal family, better than most, knew the value of non-jobs. So when Rishi Sunak became prime minister, Charles was happy to put in a good speech. A final act of duty to the queen by a devoted son. To the King’s surprise, it was like pushing on an open door. Rish! He was only too happy to insist that Gav’s reputation as a total liability, who could only be relied upon to be the most unreliable and unpleasant person in any room, was entirely undeserved. The fact that you couldn’t get anyone to admit that they hadn’t been bullied by Gav proved that it was all a plot. It would be an honor to have someone back in the Cabinet who even Boris Johnson was forced to sack. Not out of weakness. Far from it. Everyone knew that Rish! He never had to make hard deals to secure his coronation as prime minister. No. It was from a position of strength. Gav was clearly the right person for the job. Whatever that job was. He would work out those details later. For now it was just nice to have Gav back in the place. Minister without portfolio. To bring the right “Don’t flinch” attitude to the cost of living crisis. Gav was a man made for levitas. Maybe in time, Reese! he had thought he would find something for Gav to do. Minister who made everyone feel good about being British. Minister for something to do with national security: that would give him something to leak. Minister of Government Type Officials – or Minister of Intimidation as it was otherwise known. That would do. Not that Gav was a bully. Just a little cheerful and stimulating. Someone who couldn’t help but become more worthy in his proximity to power. Someone whose sense of humor had to take the whip literally. So Gav had told the leader to run. To stop making him dizzy. This was just everyday banter. And he had told a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defense to cut his throat. That was an act of kindness. He simply thought the person had choked on a crunch and simply suggested an emergency tracheotomy. He was trying to save a life. And as for Gav telling someone to jump out of the window, that was a bit of fun. He never meant for anyone to die. Only to be paralyzed from the waist down. People just need to learn to relax a little more. So, Reese! he wanted everyone to know that little Gav had his complete confidence. Until more evidence emerged that Gav was just another Billy-Not-Colleagues bully with a fragile ego. Sunak would then pretend he had no idea about Gav’s reputation for treating people in an unacceptable manner. And no one had mentioned to him that Gav had been fired twice for infidelity and incompetence. But if push came to shove, Reese! she would kick him out in a heartbeat. Anything to protect himself. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. And so it turned out. As it turned out almost everyone who had ever worked with Gav found him irresistibly hateful – to know him is to hate him – and the whistleblower system was in danger of grinding to a halt under the weight of people coming forward to say so. indeed, Brave Rish! chose to pull the plug. Third time unlucky. “It’s not me, it’s you,” she had told a tearful Gav. “One of us has a career to worry about.” Although he might have thought of it earlier. So much for his integrity, professionalism and responsibility. In the background you could hear Suella screaming. She could have sworn she should have been the first cabinet minister to be sacked. Two weeks and counting… It was left to cabinet minister Jeremy Quin – Sunak’s iteration of the rogue Michael Ellis, who could be sent to the Commons to defend any irredeemable situation – to try and salvage some semblance of decency on the part of the government. He did not make it. Labour’s shadow home secretary had used a humbling speech to try to force the government to reveal all the evidence the prime minister had before handing out cabinet posts to Suella Braverman and Gabster. He wasn’t successful, but that was beside the point. What it did was expose the hollow void at the heart of government. The moral vacuum. All Yvette Cooper wanted to see were papers, clippings, anything that would help the country understand why Leaky Sue and Gav had gone to work when they both had a history of both breaking the ministerial code and they were generally useless. Didn’t we deserve better than this? Obviously not. The Tory party was clean of talent. So we just had to suck it up. And the government would not release any documents because… … Just because. Much the same arguments were used in an earlier opposition day debate in which Labor tried to get the government to commit to the triple pension lock. “I’m sorry,” said the work and pensions secretary, Mel Strid. He couldn’t guess what would be in next week’s autumn budget. Well, right. But it was the Tories who had committed to it in their manifesto. Surely someone should be able to confirm if Sunak was going to do what he promised? He couldn’t. We just had to wait and see. Live dangerously. Live like Gav.
