If David Cameron wants to promote more women to the cabinet he need look no further than Nicky Morgan, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. I’ve known Nicky and her husband Jonathan for more than ten years, although we’re no close friends. She was selected for Loughborough around the same time I got North Norfolk. She didn’t win the seat at the first time of trying, but unlike me she had another go, and in 2010 she won it with a majority of nearly 4,000.
Since her election she has risen through the ranks without attracting the notice of the Westminster lobberati. And that is a good thing. She started off as PPS to David Willetts before being appointed a whip in 2012. She’s been a Treasury minister for only six months but she is beginning to attract some rave reviews for her quietly effective performances. She has some steel in her and is no one’s pushover. It has been reported that as a backbencher she wasn’t backward in coming forward in the 1922 committee if she had criticisms, and her views on Sayeeda Warsi were said to be crucial in the decision to remove her from the party chairmanship.
Of all the Treasury ministers who appeared on the media trumpeting the budget this week, it was clear that Nicky Morgan was being pushed forward more than the others. She did a 15 minute stint on my show and was on the Daily Politics the next day for most of the programme. Her performances were superb. She looked good, she was eloquent, she displayed an infectious sense of humour and an ability to make partisan points without appearing to do so.
Nicky Morgan’s problem is that her profile, so far, has been so low that no one really knows what she believes. Her only foray into real controversy came a couple of months ago when she said Conservatives must send out an optimistic message and not just ‘the language of hate’ if they are to win the next general election. It might sound a statement of the ‘bleeding obvious’ but she attracted some approbrium from the usual suspects on the right. Expect her to up her profile in the next couple of months. She need to give the Prime Minister an excuse to promote her in the reshuffle which I imagine will come at the end of May after the European elections.
It seems to me that there are going to be five or six new entrants to the Cabinet at the next reshuffle. Nicky Morgan has every chance to be one of them.
