The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything Quiz

Answer: Dover

Dominic Raab first entered Parliament in 2010. First entering government as a junior minister in 2015, he was first appointed to the cabinet in 2018 when he was appointed as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, aka "Brexit" Secretary, by Theresa May. In this role, he was the senior member of the government responsible for negotiating the UK's withdrawal agreement with the EU. Part of the agreement was to ensure the maintenance of trade between the UK and the EU, of which a major trade artery was the sea route between Dover and Calais. In November 2018 however, Raab, speaking at a tech conference, stated that he hadn't been aware how reliant the UK was on this corridor for trade in goods.

A few days after this appearance, Raab resigned as the "Brexit" Secretary in protest at the government's position over the Withdrawal Agreement. In 2019, following Boris Johnson's ascension to the Premiership, Raab was appointed as Foreign Secretary, a role in which he remained until 2021, before, following his actions during the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, he was moved to the role of Lord Chancellor.

Answer: Secretary of State for International Development

Priti Patel became an MP in 2010, and first entered the government as a junior minister at the Treasury in 2014. Two years later, Theresa May promoted her to the Cabinet when she was appointed as Secretary of State for International Development, with responsibility for oversight and management of the UK's development and overseas aid programmes and spending. In November 2017, it was revealed that, while she was officially on holiday the previous August, she undertook a number of meetings while in Israel with various organisations, where official business was discussed, without any officials either from her department or the Foreign Office present.

Although Patel claimed in an interview that the Foreign Office were aware of her plans, following a meeting with the Prime Minister, Theresa May, she corrected this to say that they were in fact unaware of her intentions. Two days after this however, news of additional unrecorded meetings came out, which led to her being invited to resign by the Prime Minister. She was appointed as Home Secretary by Boris Johnson in 2019, after which she has faced several accusations of breaking the Ministerial Code, a document laying out rules and standards for government ministers.

Answer: Stilton

Liz Truss was elected to the House of Commons in 2010, entering government in 2012, and joining the Cabinet in 2014. In 2019, she was appointed as the Secretary of State for International Trade, with responsibility for, amongst other duties, negotiating free trade agreements with other countries following the United Kingdom's exit from the EU. Following her appointment, she announced a large number of new deals, which were rolled over from the equivalent deals with the EU. The first brand new deal to be negotiated was with Japan, which was signed in October 2020.

One of the major points, at least from the UK side, was the terms for the sale of UK cheese to Japan, particularly blue cheeses such as Stilton. Despite Stilton sales to Japan totalling around £100,000, and an estimated 7 in 10 of the Japanese population having a degree of lactose intolerance, access to the Japanese market for Stilton almost proved to be a stumbling block to the deal being concluded. Eventually the deal was concluded, with the Japanese Foreign Minister being presented with a jar of Stilton at the signing ceremony.

Answer: Lord President of the Council

The Lord President of the Council is one of the Great Officers of State, and has responsibility for presiding over meetings of the Privy Council, which is the body of advisers to the Sovereign. In modern times, the Lord President usually serves an additional role of Leader of the House in either the House of Lords or the House of Commons, who are responsible for organising the business agenda in the House. On 28 August 2019, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the then Lord President of the Council, was sent to Balmoral Castle in Scotland to convene a Privy Council meeting with the Queen to request permission that she prorogue Parliament from 9 September until 14 October, a period of almost five weeks.

Such a long prorogation was considered to be almost unprecedented, and was seen by some as an attempt by the government to stifle debate on extending the UK's membership of the EU beyond its planned departure on 31 October, whether a negotiated exit had been completed or not. As a result, a Private Member's Bill was passed ensuring an extension would be sought if no UK-EU deal had been agreed. A number of legal challenges, including one by former Conservative Prime Minister Sir John Major, were also brought, with the Supreme Court ruling that the prorogation was in fact illegal, and therefore was nullified.

Answer: Channel 4

While Nadine Dorries was first elected in 2005, she did not become a government minister until 2019, having undergone investigations over expenses claims, and having the Conservative whip temporarily suspended at points during her time in the House of Commons. She was eventually appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in September 2021. One of her first major policy proposals was the privatisation of Channel 4, one of the terrestrial television networks in the UK.

Although Channel 4 is a publicly owned corporation, it is funded entirely by advertising, receiving no public funding at all. Despite this, while giving evidence for the first time to the Culture Select Committee of the House of Commons, Dorries gave an answer stating her belief that the network was funded by public money, and had to be corrected by a member of the committee itself.

Answer: A-Level

Gavin Williamson was first elected in 2010, initially joining the government in 2011, and becoming a Cabinet minister in 2017. Although he was invited to resign as Defence Secretary in 2019, following the succession of Boris Johnson to the premiership the same year he was appointed as Education Secretary. This meant that he was responsible for the education system in England during the first period of the COVID pandemic, which included the closure of schools and introduction of at home teaching as a result of the first national lockdown between March and the summer of 2020. To account for the fact that children would not be able to take examinations due to the lockdown, a new system to determine grades had to be implemented. This would see predicted grades from teachers used that, to prevent potential "grade inflation", would be subjected to a specially designed algorithm intended to moderate the predicted results.

The first set of results that would be subjected to this process was A-Levels, taken by 18 year olds and used to determine university places. These results saw 36% marked down at least one grade, and led to protests that high achieving pupils from underachieving schools were losing out. Despite Williamson saying on 15 August 2020 that there would be no reversal of the policy, two days later the policy was reversed, with pupils awarded whichever was higher from their teacher predicted grade or algorithm revised grade. This was subsequently used for the GCSE results (for 16-year olds) released on 20 August.

Answer: Richard Desmond

Robert Jenrick first entered Parliament in 2014, first entering the government in 2015, before joining the Cabinet as the Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary in 2019. In this role, he gained responsibility for, amongst other duties, the ultimate approval for planning applications for building developments. In January 2020, a planning application made by Richard Desmond, the owner of the Northern & Shell publishing group, was approved by Jenrick. This was for a luxury1,500 unit development, valued at approximately £1 billion, in an area of London's Docklands called the Isle of Dogs, which the government's own planning inspector had advised against approving due to the lack of affordable housing, and the proposed height of the development.

Subsequent to approval being given, it was reported that Jenrick's approval had potentially saved the developer up to £150 million in costs on the project. The developer had made a personal donation to the Conservative Party shortly after approval had been given, having lobbied the minister at a fundraising dinner prior to the decision being made. Having admitted that the decision was unlawful in May 2020, subsequent documents released showed Jenrick did not disclose the potential conflict of interest to his officials for a month.

Answer: Oil and gas producers

Rishi Sunak first became an MP in 2015, and entered government in 2019, initially as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, before becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2020. In 2022, having overseen the economy through the first two years of COVID-19, he found that, as a result of various factors, including the pandemic, the UK's exit from the EU, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a cost of living crisis was escalating due to sharply increasing energy prices, an upcoming rise in National Insurance, and higher mortgage rates.

At the same time, a number of oil and gas producers, including Shell and BP, announced record profits, which led to calls for a so-called "windfall tax" to be levied on them, to raise revenue that could be allocated to measures easing the cost of living. Although this was a measure seen as useful across the political spectrum, it was rejected by the government, being voted down in the House of Commons on 17 May 2022. Just over a week later, Sunak announced the creation of a "temporary, targeted energy profits levy" on oil and gas companies.

Answer: United Kingdom Internal Market Act

The UK's exit from the European Union also meant its exit from the Single Market, the collective trading area under which members of the EU followed a standard set of rules. However, the UK retained a land border with the EU on the island of Ireland, which meant an arrangement was needed to ensure the security of EU standards as the UK's own standards diverged. As a result, Northern Ireland remained within the Single Market, with the UK/EU border moved into the Irish Sea. Changes to the so-called "Northern Ireland Protocol" were subsequently sought by the UK government, which led to the publication of the UK Internal Market Bill.

During debate on the bill in the House of Commons, Brandon Lewis, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, explicitly said that certain parts of the bill, which related to its application in Northern Ireland, "broke international law in a specific and limited way", specifically in that it unilaterally altered the treaty between the UK and EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol. The controversy over the parts of the bill related to Northern Ireland led to the UK government removing some of them to ensure the bill's passage. The bill received Royal Assent on 17 December 2020.

Answer: Leeds

High Speed 2 was initially proposed in 2009 as a new railway network linking London with various cities in the north. Once the proposal was confirmed, plans were instituted to construct the network in two segments, with the first from London to Birmingham, and the second to complete a 'Y'-shaped network from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds. Following the completion of a review into the entire project ordered by Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport, which recommended that the project in its entirety be taken forward, the first section began construction in 2020, while the legislation for the second section was prepared for passage through Parliament. However, at this time, the Department for Transport was in the midst of a new review for future rail provision for the Midlands and the North.

The Integrated Rail Plan was published in November 2021, and saw a significant cutback in new rail provision serving Leeds, with both the eastern half of High Speed 2 removed from the project plan, as well as a second high speed line planned to connect Leeds with Manchester as part of the "Northern Powerhouse Rail" plan. This led to significant criticism from the overarching body for transport in the north of England.