A prime minister focused on change opts for a link with a troubled past

When David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister of Britain after losing the Brexit vote in 2016, he offered Members of Parliament a sad farewell: “I was once the future.” Few, perhaps including Mr Cameron himself, expected to see him return.

And yet on Monday morning he walked up the leaf-strewn driveway of 10 Downing Street to accept an appointment as Foreign Secretary from current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Cameron’s appointment must be regarded as one of the most remarkable comebacks in British political history.

For Mr Sunak, who has presented himself as a change agentit is not only a surprising choice, but also a deeply counter-intuitive one. Mr Cameron is nothing if not a bridge to the Conservative past. The decisions he made and the policies he pursued irritate Mr Sunak’s government today, a dubious legacy that helps explain the erratic course of a prime minister in political trouble.

Few public figures are more closely identified with Brexit than Mr Cameron, who called the referendum upon leaving the European Union, campaigned against it and then resigned after a narrow majority of Britons, including Mr Sunak, voted in favor.

And few are more connected to austerity, the economic policy that 57-year-old Cameron introduced when he came to power in 2010. It is blamed for starving Britain’s public services, including the crisis-ridden National Health Servicewhich has helped reduce the popularity of Mr Sunak’s government.

Cameron’s victory in 2010, which saw him form a coalition government with the centrist Liberal Democrats, ushered in a long era of Conservative rule. While Mr Sunak has at times embraced this legacy, especially with his emphasis on fiscal responsibility, he also appears to be against it.

“There’s no doubt,” he told Conservative Party members at their annual conference last month, “that it’s time for change, and it’s us.”

It is not clear how recruiting a plaid former prime minister fits into the definition of change. But Mr Cameron’s appointment serves another purpose: to… James Slimthe Foreign Secretary, who got Suella Braverman’s job at the Home Office, Mr Sunak needed an experienced, high-profile figure to lead the Foreign Office at a time when major wars were raging in Ukraine and Gaza .

“There is a chance – a slim one, but a chance nonetheless – that this will give Britain greater influence on the world stage at a time of intense international conflict,” said Timothy Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. .

Bringing in Mr Cameron will help Mr Sunak move his Cabinet towards the center after a period when Ms Braverman’s inflammatory statements led to criticism that the government had become extreme and reactionary on issues such as immigration. Mr Cameron also has a keen interest in foreign policy. As prime minister, he established a National Security Council modeled on the one in the White House.

“Sunak is not that interested in foreign policy,” said Jonathan Powell, former chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair. “This is a case of, ‘Who can I give foreign policy to so I don’t have to worry about it for the next year?’”

But the domestic politics surrounding Cameron’s appointment “are quite difficult to predict,” Professor Bale said, “apart, of course, from the day or two it will provide for distraction by the late departure of Suella Braverman.”

Cameron remains a divisive figure, even within his party, because of his handling of the Brexit referendum. Some Tories accused him of political opportunism in an attempt to suppress the party’s restive right wing. Others said he led a lackluster campaign against Brexiteers such as Nigel Farage and another former prime minister, Boris Johnson.

Mr Cameron justified calling the referendum by saying Britain deserved a vote on the country’s relationship with the European Union, given how much the EU had changed during its decades of membership.

Yet Michael Portillo, a former minister, said the 2016 referendum “will go down in history as the biggest blunder ever made by a British prime minister” – a view not uncommon in political circles.

When Tom Bradby, an ITV presenter, interviewed Mr Cameron in 2019 for the rollout of his memoir ‘For the Record’, he said viewers had written to him to say: ‘I hope you’re going to ask him to apologize for the mess he left behind.”

“I accept that my approach failed,” Cameron wrote in his book. “The decisions I made contributed to that failure. I failed.”

The budget cuts, which Cameron has pursued with his Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, have also cast a long shadow over his tenure. Mr Cameron has defended the policy as a necessary response to the global financial crisis. He noted that he left the British economy with more jobs than when he came to power.

But cuts to government spending on institutions like the NHS have left deep scars. Mr Sunak has pledged to reduce waiting times at NHS hospitals, making this one of his top five targets. Critics predict it will be an uphill battle due to years of underinvestment in Cameron’s government.

Mr Cameron’s poll numbers were already low, Professor Bale said, and his reputation was further damaged after he became embroiled in a scandal over lobbying on behalf of Greensill Capitalan Anglo-Australian financial company that went bankrupt in 2021.

Mr Cameron sent text messages to Mr Sunak, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, urging him to approve loans to Greensill, a supply chain finance company. Mr Sunak did not respond to the requests, but it raised questions about why the company was given as much access as it was given.

Mr Cameron broke no law, but his actions contributed to the image of a money-making former leader. According to the Financial Times, he would earn $70 million in Greensill stock options; the collapse of the company made it worthless. He also traveled to Saudi Arabia with company founder Lex Greensill, where the two camped with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

By all accounts, Mr Cameron had had a comfortable post-political career. He received an advance of 800,000 pounds ($980.00) for his memoirs. He served on several boards and became chairman of an Alzheimer’s disease charity. He regularly plays tennis at a club near his home in West London. In 2017, Mr Cameron’s wife, Samantha, started her own women’s fashion business.

Mr Cameron, an Eton and Oxford graduate whose father was a stockbroker, was already part of Britain’s elite. Now he can add a life peerage in the House of Lords, which King Charles III awarded him on Monday, making him eligible to serve as foreign secretary. Mr Cameron resigned as an MP in 2016; ministers must serve in the House of Commons or Lords.

Cameron’s six years in Downing Street will make him an exceptionally well-connected foreign secretary. But critics are scrutinizing his administration’s foreign policy positions, some of which seem questionable in retrospect.

Mr Cameron hosted President Xi Jinping of China in 2015, ushering in a “golden era” in relations with Beijing. He joined a US-led military intervention in Libya in 2011 that resulted in the overthrow of the dictator, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, but was criticized in Britain for its messy aftermath.

Mr. Cameron had close ties with the United States, once attending a college basketball game as a guest of President Barack Obama. But the two clashed over plans to respond to Syria after it used chemical weapons against its own people.

Mr Obama has cited Mr Cameron’s inability to get Parliament’s approval for a military strike as one of the reasons he has postponed his planned strike. Mr. Cameron personally supported military action even though he could not convince lawmakers, while Mr. Obama ultimately decided against it.

“About Syria,” Mr Cameron said in an interview with The New York Times, “I don’t think we saw things the same way.”