Over the past week, it had become increasingly clear that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was going to do what pretty much every minister in Whitehall fears and is one of the main reason to actually be Prime Minister: the cabinet reshuffle.
This political game of musical chairs is often instigated by the Cabinet Secretary (a career civil servant and generally the Head of the Home Civil Service which makes them arguably the most powerful person in Government). The Cabinet Secretary loves reshuffles because it keeps everyone on the hop and guessing at where their next ministerial job may be. This is particularly useful when ministers appear to be getting competent at their assigned job which usually interferes with the Civil Service running the country properly! 🙂
The UK Government has four high offices of state of which three are in play for changes during the average reshuffle:
- Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury – The most senior member of the Government and the only one assured of not being assigned the brief of Secretary to Northern Ireland. Ulster is much calmer now but back in The Troubles, there was a very real chance one might end their career in a blaze of glory…literally. Being PM is nice because you’ve only got to chair a few committees, attend a few debates in the House of Commons including Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), and attend an audience with His Majesty that lasts about a hour (unless the sovereign gets bored before that time is up!).
- Chancellor of the Exchequer – The finance minister that has to contend with the best that the Civil Service can throw at them to thwart their political aims and usually succeed at it, the Chancellor is often the bearer of bad news such as austere budgets and higher taxation which never goes down awfully well with the electorate. In fact, Kwasi Kwarteng’s brief stint as Chancellor under Liz Truss not only wrecked the economy, it ensured Liz would easily have the shortest time in Number 10 in history!
- Home Secretary – This person is responsible for the police and the security services (MI5 and GCHQ primarily) as well as various briefs pertaining to security of the home islands. The Home Secretary is also responsible for the administration of immigration which has been particularly pernicious of late with the surge in illegal migration across the Channel as well as Brexit which has caused no end of headaches for the Home Office.
- Foreign Secretary – The Secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office would seem to be a wonderful job being the ambassador writ large of the UK Government’s foreign policy to the world. Lots of junkets all over the place, champagne and caviar receptions, the works. The funny thing is that the average UK citizen would rather the Foreign Secretary be rather rude and nasty to foreigners whereas the Foreign Secretary has to play nice with them.
It’s not unusual for a reshuffle to occur after the State Opening of Parliament for a new session for MPs who are intending to stand down at the next election or wish to spend more time in their constituency (useful if they’re in a marginal constituency with a narrow majority and want to be seen amongst the locals to help bolster their chances for re-election). Or they may well be tired of the 24/7 life of being a Minister of the Crown.
This reshuffle was definitely inevitable when the very right-wing Home Secretary Suella Braverman went completely off the reservation with her public comments and opinion piece alleging the Metropolitan Police showed political favouritism on which protests they would crack down upon and those that they would allow to proceed.
The police do have powers to regulate and if need be arrest protestors who are disruptive or dangerous or even merely annoying and disorderly to the community at large but only if they have actionable intelligence that such criminal activities are planned or are happening.
In this case, the Met didn’t have any indication whatsoever that the pro-Palestinian march would be anything other than a peaceful (if a bit loud) journey from Hyde Park well away from the Cenotaph and ending at the US Embassy to deliver a petition that the US put more pressure on the players in the region for a cease fire. No violence or other potential offences under the law were expected and thus the Met really had no grounds for stopping the demonstration.
Her contention was that pro-Palestinian protests for a cease fire in Gaza were full of “hate marchers” would be allowed to proceed near the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day by the police whilst more right-wing and nationalist (and arguably racist) protestors would be banned and these were the groups of hooligans who actually broke through the barricades at the Cenotaph with some truly deplorable chanting.
The Ministerial Code requires that ministers submit copies of planned public speeches or articles to Number 10 for clearance prior to publication so that ministers don’t inadvertently say something stupid or contradictory to agreed Government policy.
Apparently Braverman did this but then chose to ignore the changes that Number 10 had insisted upon and published the far more incendiary version of her remarks anyway which caused an immediate political furore and firestorm even in the news media that is usually very friendly to the Conservative Party.
If you’re a Tory and you’ve lost the Daily Mail of all rags, you know you’ve really stepped in it!
But the clearest sign of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s weakness was that he didn’t sack her straightaway for going completely overboard.
In fact, she was allowed to continue in post through the weekend and participate in Remembrance Day ceremonies in spite of her comments that outright defied the Prime Minister and completely ignored the principle of collective responsibility and acceptance of decisions in Cabinet regardless of one’s personal opinions.
The inevitable axe fell on Braverman today when she was finally sacked and replaced with James Cleverly of Braintree (who unlike his name isn’t particularly clever or indeed particularly motivated) who previously served as Foreign Secretary.
Frankly, she should have been given the heave-ho quite a long while ago and indeed she was after a previous violation of the Ministerial Code as Home Secretary under Prime Minister Liz Truss (you know, the one whose time in Number 10 Downing Street couldn’t outlast a head of lettuce!) for sharing an official document from a personal EMAIL account.
You would think such a glaring error by the person with overall responsibility for the security services might well know something about security best principles but alas, no.
You’d think that Truss’ successor Sunak would have had the brains to disqualify Braverman’s from being appointed Home Secretary obvious disdain for security mere days after she was forced to resign but that’s a sign of just how weak and untenable his position is!
And it wasn’t like you couldn’t tell that he couldn’t be rid of her fast enough. The body language between the two of them on the Treasury front bench as the Leader of the Opposition is giving his Humble Address to His Majesty made it very clear that Sunak wanted to distance himself as far from her physically as possible (not easy at the best of times when the chamber is full for major debates).
Braverman’s sacking would have newsworthy on it’s own but this is when the Prime Minister did something truly unexpected and certainly far more politically aware than anything he’s shown in his tenure in Number Ten to date.
He voted her off the Cabinet island and then buried the story of her sacking by appointing David Cameron (or “Dodgy Dave” as the Beast of Bolsover Dennis Skinner used to call him) as the new Foreign Secretary.
There are a few complications with that appointment, not the least of which is that David Cameron was not a Member of Parliament at the time the appointment was made!
If you’ll recall, Cameron was leader of the Conservative Party for 11 years, six of which were spent as Prime Minister. His achievement in that office that will be remembered forever was being the one who brought the Brexit referendum to the voters and was the leader of the campaign to remain in the European Union.
When the voters chose to leave the EU, he stood down as Prime Minister and left the House of Commons completely leaving the actual details of the implementation of Brexit to Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
Some wiseacre on one of the chat shows described it as the first time they’d ever heard of a government imposing economic sanctions upon their own country and the hard Brexit that has depressed the UK’s economy ever since has certainly lived up to that billing.
Whilst he was away from the Commons, he was off doing some consulting including some dodgy dealings with a company called Greensill in which he walked away with three to four million pounds for a firm that went bust under questionable circumstances and which a select committee investigating the affair described as an appalling lack of judgment.
Cameron also has excoriated Rishi Sunak’s recent scorched earth policy of unilaterally cancelling an once-in-a-generation high-speed rail project for the northwest of the country that would have brought many high-paying jobs as well as dramatically improved train service which is very unlikely to be able to be revived by the inevitable Labour government likely coming in the next election.
To be fair, Cameron’s right on the money on that one but it does seem very odd that Sunak would pick the chief Remainer who quit the Commons after not getting his way in the Brexit referendum, someone who has had dodgy dealings more than a few times in his career, and has recently been quite critical of the government to take on the foreign policy brief for the country.
But the very out-of-left-field nature of the choice guaranteed that Suella Braverman’s petulant and nasty response to being sacked would have zero oxygen in the media as they’re falling all over themselves wondering how in the hell Cameron’s appointment will work in practice.
The first hurdle was that he was not a MP but that was solved by making him a life peer as a Baron and giving him a seat in the Lords by appointment of His Majesty.
There is precedent for members of the Lords serving in Cabinet and the most recent to hold a Great Office of State was Lord Carrington who was Foreign Secretary for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the unpleasantness and brief war in the Falkland Islands in 1982 for which he would resign for the Foreign Office’s failure to foresee the Argentinian attempt to occupy the islands they felt were theirs.
But there are some practical problems in holding the new Foreign Secretary accountable.
As a sitting member of the Lords, Cameron isn’t permitted to take questions at the despatch box or participate in debates in the Commons so any questions that would ordinarily go to the Foreign Secretary will have to be answered by junior ministers who are actually members of the Commons. He will be able to offer testimony to select committees as a witness but Speaker Hoyle has quite a few logistical hurdles to work out to make the appointment work in practise.
Whether Sunak’s appointment of Cameron as Foreign Secretary is an act of brilliance meant to slam the door in the faces of the more virulent right-wing of his party or an act of desperation to try to move the electoral needle from what is expected to be a very dreadful night for the Tories in 2024 remains to be seen.
It will certainly be interesting…get your popcorn and enjoy the show! 🙂