Under pressure, the British leader is again trying to reset by moving to the center
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fired one of his most senior and divisive ministers on Monday, in a reshuffle of his top team that unexpectedly brought a centrist predecessor, David Cameron, back into government.
Suella Braverman’s departure as Home Secretary and Mr Cameron’s surprise return as Foreign Secretary were the latest in a series of convulsions that have rocked the ruling Conservative Party since the ill-fated Brexit referendum that Mr Cameron called out in 2016, signaling the danger Mr Sunak faces as he approaches the general election expected next year.
After thirteen years in Downing Street, the Conservatives’ grip on power appears to be waning, with the party trailing Labor by some 20 points in the polls, against a challenging economic backdrop, with slow growth and inflation eroding living standards. and a public sector is under pressure. acute pressure after years of austerity led by the Conservatives.
Mr Sunak has made several attempts to tackle his party’s unpopularity with voters, by weakening environmental targets, promising to defend motorists and promising tougher sentences for serious criminals. None seem to have worked.
At the same time, Ms. Braverman, seen as a rival within the party, had become increasingly emboldened as Home Secretary, raising her profile and appearing to pave the way for a leadership bid if the Conservatives lose the election, as many expect .
Last week she wrote an extraordinary opinion piece in The Times of London, which was not authorized by Downing Street, in which she criticized the police for not trying to ban a pro-Palestinian protest march in the capital and described the demonstrators as “hate mongers”. protesters” and “Islamists.”
After counter-protesters clashed with police on Saturday, critics accused Ms Braverman of stoking tensions and encouraging far-right demonstrators onto the streets, and her position was judged untenable by Downing Street.
Mr Sunak and Ms Braverman spoke by phone on Monday, and in the job shuffle that followed her departure, she was replaced by the more softening former foreign secretary, James Cleverly, leaving his position open to Mr Cameron.
Both men are considered moderates and the changes appeared to signal a shift away from the divisive politics championed by Ms Braverman, whose focus on cultural issues had become a hallmark of Sunak’s government in recent months.
Neither appointment was good news for the right-wing faction of the Conservative Party, where Ms. Braverman had a small but vocal group of supporters. So did Mr Sunak’s decision to retain Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Hunt’s opposition to offering tax cuts has antagonized a broader group of conservative lawmakers. He, like Cameron, campaigned against Brexit in 2016, but Hunt has made controlling inflation his priority and says cutting taxes will have to wait.
Mr Cameron’s return to Cabinet may remind some voters of the political chaos he unleashed in 2016 when Britain ignored his recommendation and narrowly voted to leave the European Union. Mr Sunak is the fourth Conservative leader to become prime minister since Mr Cameron stepped aside following the referendum result, which sent shockwaves across Europe.
Mr Sunak restored some stability when he succeeded Liz Truss as prime minister last year, but his latest reshuffle threatens to reopen the ideological divisions that have dogged the party in recent years. Although the salience of Brexit has faded in British politics, Cameron – who led the campaign against it – will now be partly responsible for promoting the policy around the world.
But while bringing back Mr Cameron is a political gamble, Mr Sunak may have deemed the risk worth it. He has limited time to win back voters, or possibly even limit the magnitude of defeat in the looming election.
Ms Braverman had lost her job as home secretary once before, under Ms Truss’s short-lived government, but she got it back from Mr Sunak when he entered Downing Street. She used her position in Cabinet to push hard-right policies and embraced polarizing rhetoric, describing migration as a ‘hurricane’, the arrival of asylum seekers on British shores as an ‘invasion’ and homelessness as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
Although Mr Sunak’s language was more moderate, he supported most of her ideas – in particular her push for a policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. That faces a critical test on Wednesday, when the country’s Supreme Court will rule on its legality after a series of challenges.
The decision to bring back Cameron, who led the Conservatives between 2005 and 2016, seemed at odds with Sunak’s recent claims at his party’s annual conference that he would be an agent of change.
It also underlined a constitutional requirement of the British political system that ministers serve gain a seat in parliament so that they can propose legislation and be held accountable by fellow legislators. As a result, Mr Sunak on Monday nominated Mr Cameron for a seat in the House of Lords, the less powerful, unelected upper chamber of Parliament.
It is not the first time in modern times that a Foreign Secretary has been a member of the House of Lords, rather than the House of Commons: Peter Carington, who became Lord Carrington – and as such a second R in his name – served in that role between 1979-82. He resigned during the Falklands crisis, when troops from Argentina occupied a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic in 1982, sparking a short-lived conflict.
Although the situation is not unique, Mr Cameron’s status as a member of the House of Lords has already caused tension among lawmakers in the House of Commons, as he normally does not speak to them, but to an assembly of non- elected members of the Senate. .
House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said Monday he is looking into ways the new foreign secretary can be held to account by elected lawmakers. It was “particularly important” that they were able to scrutinize his work, “given the gravity of the current international situation”, Mr Hoyle told parliament.