What’s with all the made-up titles for government ministers?

As a Westminster correspondent, one of my bugbears has always been the titles politicians give themselves.

On the most basic level, there’s always that nagging worry at the back of your mind as you write – people do know that secretaries run the departments in Whitehall, don’t they? They do realise that shadow ministers aren’t just tagging along on work experience?

Then there’s the fantasy Ruritania titles which seem designed only to confuse. Anyone know what the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster does? Or the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal? And worst of all for a reporter with a word-count to stick to, there is the plague of ever-expanding titles which swallow up more and more column inches with indigestible verbiage. Surely the secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy or the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport could spare us all a few words from their overgrown monikers?

But now a whole new issue is rearing its head, with titles seemingly selected out of a spirit of boosterism entirely in keeping with Boris Johnson’s tendency to boast about things he hasn’t achieved yet. Michael Gove, for example, is the secretary of state for levelling up. In earlier, more innocent times, he would have been the minister for local government or the regions or something equally neutral, and we could have rattled off his title without inadvertently bigging up the government’s agenda.

But now, every time we mention Gove, the prime minister’s favourite catchphrase gets a name-check. And the impression is given that “levelling up” is indeed what Gove is up to, and, by inference, that the equalisation of prosperity and opportunity between different parts of the country is a task that is being fulfilled. What if inequality between the regions is actually widening? Is that still the responsibility of the levelling up secretary? Or should there be a levelling down secretary to deal with that?

Jacob Rees-Mogg has got two boastful claims in his title, as minister of state for Brexit opportunities and government efficiency (a mouthful which also raises my hackles on the grounds of its length, but we’ll leave that to one side).

A minister for the civil service would be responsible for the operation of government, good or bad. But a minister for government efficiency by implication can only be making it more efficient, whether it’s by prowling round empty offices leaving passive-aggressive notes or dreaming up ways to cut the workforce by tens of thousands.

And why a minister for Brexit “opportunities”, given that these appear to be as elusive as Lewis Carroll’s Snark? Of course, foreign secretary Liz Truss is responsible for the bulk of the government’s Brexit agenda, and could perhaps take on the supplementary title of minister for picking fights with Brussels.

Which doesn’t leave much for Mr Rees-Mogg to do, if – as his title implies – Brexit disasters and Brexit calamities and Brexit damage to the economy lie outside his remit. Perhaps there should be another minister for those. Rees-Mogg himself seems so short of Brexit “opportunities” that he was famously forced to ask Sun readers to suggest some. So as a reporter, am I misleading my readers by using his official title and appearing to endorse the idea that there are so many opportunities out there that they need a separate minister to look after them all?

For now, I’ve been largely calling him the Brexit minister, though it has the effect of inflating his influence. Perhaps we would do better to look for something that more accurately reflects his role in the government – minister for appearing on TV and annoying liberals has a bit of a ring to it…

Yours,

Political editor

Andrew Woodcock