The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has been described as self-serving, venomous and in a rush to ascend the greasy pole by the former Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan in the latest extracts from his diaries.
“In quite the most extraordinary cabinet appointment I can think of, Gavin Williamson has been appointed defence secretary. It is absolutely absurd. He seems to have pushed himself forward for this undeserved promotion. It is a brazenly self-serving manoeuvre that will further embed the view of him as a sly schemer, which he undoubtedly is,” Duncan wrote in November 2017.
“He is also ludicrously unqualified for the heavyweight job of defence secretary, having never run anything. His experience amounts to having been a fireplace salesman, then bag-carrier for two PMs, then chief whip for a year. What on earth was the PM thinking?
In other passages, Duncan says Williamson is suspected of briefing journalists against Conservative colleagues for his own gain and says he is “universally detested” as defence secretary – a role from which he was sacked in 2019 – having “seriously overplayed his hand” as he rushed to “ascend the greasy pole” and get the job.
Read the full article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/05/gavin-williamson-described-sly-schemer-ex-minister-alan-duncan