There have been spectacular resignations of British defence secretaries: Michael Heseltine over the Westland affair in 1986 comes immediately to mind. But there has not been a spectacular sacking of a defence secretary in the modern era – until now, with the firing of Gavin Williamson. The contrast does not end there. Heseltine was a genuinely major figure who quit over his belief in backing British and European defence suppliers. Williamson is a genuine minnow who got himself fired because of his ambition.
Theresa May is an unpopular Tory leader, against whom half of the Tory party seems to be actively conspiring, but Williamson will find little sympathy. The prime minister now holds him responsible, whatever his denials, for the unprecedented leak of a discussion in the National Security Council to the Daily Telegraph last week. The leak enabled the Telegraph to name five ministers – including Williamson – who had attacked the involvement of the Chinese giant Huawei in the UK’s 5G telecoms system, and to report that May herself had overridden their objections.
As a leak, it was outrageous, since it not only broke the general rules about ministerial leaking – “No government can be successful which cannot keep its secrets,” the Labour premier Clem Attlee famously said – but it also did so from within the very sanctum of British government, its security decision-making elite.
May even implied in her sacking letter that her defence secretary had failed to cooperate fully with the investigation. The other NSC attendees, she wrote, had “answered all questions, engaged properly, and provided as much information as possible to assist with the investigation … your conduct has not been of the same standard as others”. It is hard to imagine a more egregious breach, and there was speculation that a police investigation might lead to the mind-boggling sight of a minister standing in the dock facing a charge under the official secrets laws.
As an error of judgment, what Williamson did was no less monumental. He implicated four senior colleagues in the suspicion that they might have been responsible for the leak. He must have known that the Whitehall leak inquiry stood a good chance of catching him out. Now it has done so.
Williamson was not up to the job he was doing. He flew too close to the sun – or in this case the Daily Telegraph. And he was fingered. No one will be sorry to see him go. He was a minister who commanded little respect and had few loyal followers. He will have none at all now. And his chances of leading the Tory party, which presumably lay behind his fateful act of stupidity, are now zero.
May has done the right thing. Every one of her predecessors would have done the same. Every one of them would be right. The consequences make little difference to the abiding Brexit-based instability of the May government, but the promotion of Rory Stewart to the international development job is a reward for the loyalty that is so conspicuously absent in so much of the Tory ranks.
• Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
