The secretary of state for health is often considered to be the worst job in the British government: the chance to preside over a broken healthcare system with little thanks given for any marginal improvements made; not to mention the looming threat of war with the junior doctors. The justice secretary, meanwhile, has to oversee the sticky questions of prisons (More prisoners? Boo! Fewer? Booo!). Such are the trade-offs for access to real power – the gift to make yourself incredibly unpopular.
Of course there is one job in government more thankless than health and more Sisyphean than justice. When Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It promises a future promotion to an outgoing minister he says: “When you come back, it’ll be as foreign secretary.” The resigning minister replies, incredulously: “And you mean foreign secretary? That isn’t code for Northern Ireland? I’m not f***ing going there.
” Harsh. But Northern Ireland has long been consigned as a backwater in Westminster’s imagination – at least since the denouement of the Troubles, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, and the relative stability afforded to the region until 2016. Such an attitude is evidenced by the calibre of politicians offered the posting in the past 14 years.
When Karen Bradley held the role (2018-19) she infamously admitted to not knowing that “nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties, and vice versa”. This would not be unlike a junior doctor, on their first day, looking t.
