A young green shoot

Following the departure of Liam Fox and the subsequent reshuffle with Philip Hammond going to Defence and Justine Greening to Transport, one further appointment does not appear to have received that much publicity, although having said that two short articles have appeared in the press; namely the Mail and a local newspaper, the Norwich Evening News. I refer to the appointment of Chloe Smith to the position of Economic Secretary to the Treasury.

This young lady, whose career has been mainly spent working for the Conservative Party, other than a brief spell with Deloitte Touche as a 'management consultant', has had a meteoric rise since becoming a Member of Parliament in 2009 aged 27. Previously, on leaving school she had taken a gap-year working for former Conservative education secretary Gillian Shephard and then went on to the University of York where she read English Literature and also undertook summer work for Bernard Jenkin.

When considering the appointment of politicians to areas of responsibility, one does have to question moving someone (Greening) with a background in economics to transport where she has none; moving someone with a PPE (Hammond) with no background in transport to another area in which it appears he has no background, namely defense. Then we come to Chloe Smith, whose background is mainly in politics, who read English Literature and worked briefly as a management consultant, who would appear to have little or no background in economics, to the Treasury department.

One does have to wonder what experience or qualifications Chloe Smith has to fill such an important position in government and to also wonder how she has 'managed', within two years of first being elected, to now be knocking on the door of the cabinet at the tender age of 29. Heaven help us - as one comment said in the Mail - the ink is hardly dry on her birth certificate!