Politics as it happened: Grant Shapps replaces Wallace as Defence Secretary in Rishi Sunak's mini reshuffle

Shadow defence secretary John Healey has congratulated Grant Shapps on his new role but said he was taking charge after more than a decade of Conservative failure.

The Labour frontbencher said: “I congratulate Grant Shapps today.

“The first duty of any government is to keep our country safe and I will always work with the new Defence Secretary on this basis, especially on Ukraine

“But after 13 years of Tory defence failures, a change at the top will not change this record.”

Claire Coutinho, the current children's minister, has replaced Shapps as Energy Secretary, the first of the 2019 intake to get a senior Cabinet role.

She became the MP for East Surrey four years ago, after a career working for investment bank Merrill Lynch and accounting firm KPMG. She also worked as a special adviser in the Treasury while Rishi Sunak was the Chief Secretary.

The Oxford graduate said she left KPMG to join government to help deliver "Brexit for the inside". After becoming an MP she was criticised for supporting Dominic Cummings' Covid road trip to the North East. She said what Cummings had done was in the rules, and he deserved "our compassion".

Coutinho became a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Sunak, when he was Chancellor, and also supported his leadership bid.

My colleague Henry Sandercock has put together a piece on Grant Shapps' biggest gaffes - which tend to stack up when you've been in government for a while. Even so, the new Defence Secretary's are quite bizarre, from poor photoshop skills to using pseudonyms.

1. The Boris Johnson photo edit

In the run up to the Virgin Orbit launch, Grant Shapps tweeted excitedly about how “delighted” the government was to be backing the “FIRST [sic] ever satellite launch from European soil”.

Shapps used an image of himself meeting Virgin Orbit’s CEO Dan Hart at Newquay Spaceport. The photograph dated from 9 June 2021 ahead of the G7 summit that took place a few days later in Cornwall.

But the photo Shapps posted was missing someone - Boris Johnson. The then-Prime Minister had been at the centre of the original picture wearing Virgin Orbit overalls but had been edited out.

‘Mysterious’ Wikipedia edits

Grant Shapps’s photo mishap was not the first time the Cabinet minister has been ridiculed for a gaffe. In 2012, while he was the Conservative Party chair, Shapps admitted to editing his own Wikipedia entry using anonymous accounts.

The Observer reported that these accounts had removed references to previous embarrassing political gaffes, his business career and his net worth using computers in his constituency office. In 2015, The Guardian also reported that either Shapps himself or someone close to him had also used an anonymous Wikipedia account to edit the entries of his political opponents. Shapps denied the allegations.

The use of pseudonyms

In a separate 2015 incident, Shapps was forced to admit he had held a second job under the pseudonym Michael Green. There had been questions about the identity of Michael Green several years earlier, which led to a surreal doorstepping of Shapps by Channel 4’s political reporter Michael Crick.

His other pseudonyms have included: Corinne Stockheath, Dr JLM Richards and Richard Warton - although Shapps insists they are all real people. All were used to provide testimonials for his business venture HowToCorp.

Liberal Democrat by-election comments

One of Shapps’ earliest blunders came when he was a vice-chairperson of the Conservative Party in 2007. After the death of Labour Party MP Piara Khabra, who represented Ealing Southall, West London, a by-election took place in the constituency.

Shapps was involved in the Tory candidate’s campaign. In a bid to destabilise the Liberal Democrats’ election bid, he commented on a YouTube post by the party while pretending to be a Lib Dem supporter, writing: “Okay, realistically we’re not going to win though. Especially since the Tories have just received 5 defecting Councillors from Labour. Don’t quite know how they’ve done it, but the Tories have stolen a march on us this time.”

The only flaw in the plan was that he had forgotten he was logged in under his own name. In the end, the ruse didn’t work. The Lib Dems beat the Conservatives to second-place in the constituency.

Read Henry's full piece here.

Perhaps not the ideal first comments Grant Shapps was after. A former chief of the general staff of the British Army has said he knows “very little about defence” and it will take him “quite some time to get up to speed”,

Lord Dannatt told Sky News Ben Wallace “did a good job, but he leaves with work in progress”, adding: “And now we have a new Defence Secretary who knows very little about defence, and it’s a complex portfolio. It will take him quite some time to get up to speed.

“I think there is a risk that certainly the debate on resources for defence stagnates, at least until Grant Shapps can get his head around his portfolio.”

He went on: “I think what the chief of defence staff and the single service chiefs will be hoping from the new Secretary of State for Defence is that he will listen to the concerns that they have within the wider context of the insecurity of the world.

“And although he may well have been appointed as someone who is going to support the Prime Minister and help the Conservative Party in its general election campaign, they will be hoping that he will really understand defence and push the case for defence, not just for the Ministry of Defence’s own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole country.

“Because there is a very strong case that we should be investing more in defence than we currently are. Ben Wallace knew that. Ben Wallace was arguing for it. Is that discussion going to continue? Or will Grant Shapps choose to go quietly?”

The Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has highlighted the fact that Claire Coutinho has become the sixth Energy Secretary in less than four years.

He said: “I congratulate Claire Coutinho on her appointment as Energy Secretary. But it speaks volumes about the failures of Conservative energy policy that we are now onto the 6th energy secretary in less than four years. The truth is that the reshuffling of the Tory deckchairs will not get Britain a proper energy policy that delivers lower bills, energy security, good jobs and climate leadership. 

 “The new Energy Secretary needs to recognise that Grant Shapps’ approach has been a disaster and distance herself from it. His opposition to clean, homegrown power has damaged Britain's energy security, alarmed business and driven away investors.

 "The truth is that only a Labour government can deliver for Britain with our plan to make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030 through a zero carbon power system, and GB Energy, our publicly-owned energy company to invest in homegrown power by Britain, for Britain." 

The Labour Party has sent out a briefing on new Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho. It states that she has "generally voted against measures to prevent climate change", according to TheyWorkForYou - which analyses MPs' voting records.

Labour says Coutinho voted against measures to tackle climate change 10 times between 2020 and 2022, including voting against a ban on fracking in October 2022. 

She also voted against a Labour amendment to the Queen’s Speech in May 2022 that would have imposed an additional windfall tax on oil and gas firms.

Coutinho also called for fewer people to receive energy support in September 2022, when she said she would have preferred the government to have used “a targeted support programme”.