The secretary of state for Wales, Cheryl Gillan, sensationally claimed last June that she would quit as a cabinet minister if the proposed high speed rail route through her picturesque Chilterns constituency went ahead:
“If the proposals go through as they are, I cannot vote for them,” she said. “If that happens, the prime minister must decide whether he wants me to continue as a minister or not.”
“If the project goes ahead, I would resign the whip unless the prime minister tells me he would allow me to vote against it. When I was appointed to the cabinet, the prime minister knew of my opposition to this.”
As Caerphilly Labour MP Wayne David remarked to much hilarity in Prime Minister’s Questions, this was is a “very kind offer”, but with the £32bn project expected to be given the green light tomorrow, is she a woman of her word?
In a brazen attempt to save her career and a raft of “sack me over HS2” headlines, Gillan has now made the astonishing claim that she never said she would resign:
“I never said I would resign from Cabinet. I would resign from the whip on voting on the Bill. Everyone can speculate, but I made my views clear.”
Is Cameron so weak that he would allow a member of his cabinet to rebel on a single vote? As one parliamentarian has been heard to remark:
We have heard of trains cancelled because of snow and leaves — but never before because of a Secretary of State on the line.
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[...] change has a very clear reason: the presence of Cheryl Gillan in the cabinet. The Welsh secretary threatened to resign over HS2, and appears to have received a £500 million tunnel through her constituency in [...]