YOU think some burnt-out Conservative Party figure, some terrible old former minister from yesterday, is gone; the small space they occupied in your mind can now be used for something more useful.

Only it turns out you can’t. Because the Tories are increasingly busy rejuvenating their old assets by giving them new salaried jobs as officials.

Caroline Spelman is the latest. She was the Tory environment secretary from 2010-12, among other roles. She stood down from Parliament in 2019 because she was sick of Tory infighting over Brexit (Spelman favoured Remain).

But Rishi Sunak is bringing the Tory gang back together: in March, the current Environment Secretary Therese Coffey put the former environment secretary Spelman onto the board of Natural England.

“Elected Tory puts unelected Tory into an official post” is bad enough — but Natural England is supposed to be an “arm’s length” body, in charge of government environmental regulation and advice.

Those arms are very short if the people at both ends either are or have been Tory environment secretaries.

Spelman’s appointment has an extra bad smell. Natural England is supposed to look after ancient woodlands and “areas of outstanding natural beauty.” Yet as environment secretary, Spelman tried to privatise, not preserve, British forests.

Spelman proposed selling off a huge swathe — 258,000 hectares — of government-owned forest in 2011. Spelman’s sell-off-the-ancient-forests plan was so grim that even back-bench Tories revolted.

Spelman had to stop the sale, in a humiliating climbdown. Recycling is supposed to be environmental — but not when it is Tories recycling their old ministers as new officials.

It’s the kind of behaviour — disgraced ruling party member given state position — that gets Third World countries called corrupt and “crony capitalist.”

And also an increasingly common Conservative Party tactic.

Back in 2020, then-education secretary Gavin Williamson needed to appoint someone to the Office for Students — the regulator of universities.

The Tories set up this organisation, pretending it would stick up for the interests of students. But did Williamson appoint somebody who had, say, recently run a students’ union, or campaigned for students’ interests?

No, he appointed a former Tory minister: James Wharton, who had lost his seat to Labour in the 2017 “Corbyn surge” election. Wharton continued to help out by running Boris Johnson’s 2019 Tory leadership campaign.

So the Tories renamed him Baron Wharton of Yarm, and put him in charge of the Office for Students — making clear that office is there for weird Tory anti-student campaigns, like the “free speech” drive which means making students listen to right-wing speakers they don’t like, and trying to stop students demonstrating — which is actually free speech — against their right-wing pals.

There’s more. Last July, one of the last acts of Johnson’s government was setting up a UK Commission on Covid Commemoration.

Johnson was very scared by the unofficial Covid Memorial Wall which was launched by the grassroots group Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice two months before.

Johnson set up his commission to try to take Covid memorialisation out of the hands of independent campaigners who were critical of his government. Who to put in charge of this commission? Former Tory Cabinet minister, Baroness Nicky Morgan.

Not only is she a former Tory minister, but she was also put in the Lords and served as a minister for Johnson after she left Parliament in 2019. Morgan’s commission is supposed to report at the end of this month on its Tory-friendly Covid commemoration.

Right now, the Tories are clearly nervous about policing. They want more “crackdowns” on “beggars” and the young, while simultaneously cutting costs and getting around the crisis of confidence in cops over racism, misogyny and bigotry.

To help them out, they are putting leading Tory Party members in charge of key bodies. In 2021 Priti Patel made Nick Herbert the chair of the College of Policing, a national body in charge of police standards and training. Herbert was a Tory MP until 2019, and a former Tory policing minister.

As a side hobby, Herbert founded a think tank called Project for Modern Democracy in 2017. It seems to have become inactive by 2022 — perhaps Herbert could see appointing ex-Tory ministers to key police bodies was not really compatible with waffling on about “modern democracy.”

Also in 2021, Patel gave Julia Mulligan three jobs. One is the “independent chair” of the Police Advisory Board for England and Wales, which advises on police reform.

Another is the “senior independent director” of the Independent Office for Police Conduct which investigates “the most serious and sensitive incidents and allegations involving the police in England and Wales” and claims to be “independent of the police, government and interest groups.” And a third as a member of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority.

Mulligan is a longstanding Tory activist, having served as the elected Conservative North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner from 2012-21.

For extra wrongness, given Mulligan is on the boards of organisations looking at police misbehaviour and reform, in 2018 a North Yorkshire police and crime panel investigated Mulligan herself and found she had displayed “bullying behaviour.”  

Staff accused her of making negative and humiliating comments and the official investigation said “the perception of constant criticism formed a key feature of the working environment.”

Sometimes these appointments look like the Tories are just looking after their own, giving ex-ministers nice jobs, so that future ministers will in turn give them nice jobs.

So in 2022, then-business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng made former Tory science minister David Willetts the chair of the UK Space Agency.

The Tories want to ensure that their party dominates the unelected parts of government on earth and in the heavens. They are Tory-fying the state.

Labour could reverse this, if and when it is elected, by putting trade unionists, justice campaigners, anti-poverty activists and the like in official positions.

Unfortunately, if the experience of Tony Blair’s government is anything to go by, it will instead put billionaires, businessmen and burnt-out Labour lords onto government boards and committees.

Follow Solomon on Twitter @SolHughesWriter.