Here's Gavin Williamson addressing the 2017 Conservative Conference as government chief whip:
"I don't much like the stick. But it is amazing what can be achieved with a sharpened carrot."
This short clip doesn't do justice to the weirdness of his delivery of the whole speech.
Gavin Williamson is facing a complaint that he sent "vile" and "threatening" messages to former chief whip Wendy Morton, raising questions over Rishi Sunak’s decision to reappoint the twice-sacked Tory.
Morton is believed to have made a formal complaint to the Conservative party over claims of Williamson’s behaviour to her in the final days of Liz Truss’s government.
A source told Tortoise Media that Morton had passed on "vile and threatening messages" she had received during the time she was chief whip, which she considered had a misogynistic undertone.
Serious punters will be aware that Williamson has form.
Williamson has been sacked twice. Theresa May forced him to step down as defence secretary after an inquiry into a leak from the national security council, raising security fears, and Boris Johnson ousted him from cabinet over his handling of the exam fiasco when he was education secretary.
The Guardian, however, quotes him as saying he "strongly refutes [sic] these allegations".
Williamson was brought back by Boris Johnson and then Sunak as a reward for helping with their successful leadership campaigns.
Read more on Tortoise Media (scroll down to find this story).
Photo by GaborfromHungary at Morguefile.com
If Rishi Sunak was meant to offer a fresh start, then his first cabinet was deeply disappointing. There was little sign of a cabinet of all the talents, made possible by the soothing of old enmities, beyond the return of Michael Gove.
In fact it's hard not to be depressed at many of the names he brought back or kept on yesterday: Gavin Williamson, Suella Braverman, Dominic Raab, Thérèse Coffey.
If you try to come up with a list of four more encouraging names, you are likely to come up with something like: David Gauke, Dominic Grieve, Justine Greening, Rory Stewart.
Trouble is, none of that four is still in the Commons. All were among the 21 Conservative MPs who lost the whip in September 2019 for, in effect, voting against a no-deal Brexit.
Gauke and Grieve stood as Independents in the general election later that year, while the other two did not defend their seats under any label.
It's clear that Boris Johnson's 2019 purge will continue to hurt his party for years to come, and not just because it cannot spare people of that talent.
If the Conservative Party is to have a future that does not involve a permanent shift to being the English Nationalist Party, then at some point the moderates are going to have to fight back.
And if they are going to do so, those moderates and the party as a whole will need a leader - a Tory version of Neil Kinnock, if you will.
It's possible to imagine that such a figure can be found among the four names I chose. It's much harder to imagine he or she is to be found in Sunak's new cabinet.
Ed Davey says Gavin Williamson is the worst education secretary in living memory. He's right, of course.
But then Williamson is not alone in not deserving a place around the cabinet table.
Priti Patel resigned as secretary of state for international development when it emerged she had been holding meetings with Israeli officials without informing anyone in London. Yet somehow today she is home secretary.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is such a liability that he had to be hidden from voters during the last general election, but he is still leader of the House of Commons.
But maybe their presence should not be such a surprise.
Many Conservatives with principles - David Gauke, Rory Stewart, Nicholas Soames - were effectively sacked from the Commons by Boris Johnson in September 2019.
They were not the sort of people he wanted to surround himself with. Better to have malleable mediocrities who will do whatever they are told.
Better still to have people no other Conservative prime minister would dream of appointing to the cabinet. They will know that they owe their careers to Johnson and that any successful rebellion against him would inevitably lead to the end of those careers.
It's probably all in Machiavelli: surround yourself with people who should never have been put in a position of power and you will be much more secure.
"I feel particularly angry at some of the spurious claims made before, during and after the referendum campaign, and especially since the current Prime Minister has taken office.
"Very many hard-working, intelligent, patriotic people voted Leave, having been deliberately misled by an alliance of speculators, media barons and politicians driven by a desire for profit, influence or career advancement.
"These same vested interests now seem hell-bent on driving us over the no deal cliff. But we in the Liberal Democrats refuse to give up on our country and will not be silenced by the Prime Minister’s bombast and blather."
There are many children who will hate the idea (I would have been one) but there are others who would jump at the idea of "specialist Service Schools," so why shouldn’t they be able to attend them?One of the problems with the left in education is their assumption that there is an objectively best system that must be imposed everywhere all at once. The truth is more complicated than that.
