You scratch my back, and… Labour does favours for Tories
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/you-scratch-my-back-and-labour-does-favours-for-tories

Why is the Labour government so addicted to giving government jobs to Tories when it spent so long trying to oust them? In the hope the favour is returned the next time the Tories return to power, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
THERE has been a small rush of Tory-linked appointments by the Labour government, showing Starmer’s ministers are pretty comfortable working with Conservatives. It all looks like a uniform, centrist “political class” are settling back in power, however we voted.
In March, Science Secretary Peter Kyle made former Tory science minister David Willetts chair of the Regulatory Innovation Office. A Labour science minister giving a government job to a former Tory science minister looks like “one hand washing another,” a political system where the “insiders” just give each other jobs.
At election time, the winning party promises “change,” and claims big ideological differences with the losers for the purpose of the election. After the votes, we get more of the same.
The Regulatory Innovation Office is supposed to stop regulators from getting in the way of new business innovations. Willetts is a veteran Thatcherite, who worked for Thatcher in her policy unit in the 1980s, so trying to reduce regulation is right up his street.
Willetts is an “intellectual” Tory nicknamed “two brains,” although both of these brains have backed policies like the Poll Tax, which are now viewed as disastrous.
Willetts was a firm backer of Thatcher’s policies during the miners’ strike, and as a minister upped students’ university tuition fees to £9,000 a year. If Labour members — or voters — were asked if they wanted Willetts, they would surely say “no.” Which is why they weren’t asked.
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