Rishi Sunak appointed ex-Prime Minister David Cameron as his foreign secretary, a shock return to frontline politics for a man who led the UK between 2010 and 2016 but is better known for calling the Brexit referendum.
Cameron replaces James Cleverly, who became home secretary to fill the post vacated by Suella Braverman, Sunak’s office said a statement Monday. Braverman’s firing alone would have been a seismic political move in Westminster; adding Cameron to the mix takes it to another level.
The premier may be trying to shore up support among centrist, more liberal Tory voters who were key to bringing Cameron to power in 2010 and to his outright general election win in 2015. That sense is amplified by doing it on the same day as the departure of Braverman, the pugilistic politician Sunak brought in to mollify the right-wing of his party on taking office just over a year ago.
Cameron’s appointment “put to bed” the “right-wing lurch” of the Tory party, Michael Heseltine, deputy prime minister from 1995 to 1997, told Times Radio.
But it is a dramatic gamble for Sunak as he tries to overturn a 20-point polling deficit to the Labour Party before a general election expected in 2024. Cameron had resigned as premier after the UK voted to leave the European Union, which he campaigned against. He is unpopular with both Remainers and Leavers.
Read more: Sunak Brings Ex-PM David Cameron Into UK Cabinet in Shock Move
It also raises the question of how Sunak tries to keep the pro-Brexit coalition of voters who backed Boris Johnson in 2019. The prime minister’s strategy has been to try to blend his top team to appeal to both camps. Meanwhile just weeks ago, Sunak had lumped the UK’s political direction under Cameron and other predecessors as 30 years of collective failure.
Just 24% of UK adults view Cameron favorably, compared to 45% who see him unfavorably, polling company Savanta said Monday, circulating a survey it conducted about a month ago.
Early reaction to the reshuffle illustrated Tory divisions. Some more centrist MPs welcomed the move including Damian Green, who said on the social media platform X it is “very good news. A solid center-right government is what the country needs.” Former premier Theresa May wrote on the same platform that Cameron’s “immense experience on the international stage will be invaluable.”
But pro-Brexit MP Jacob Rees-Mogg questioned whether the appointment of Cameron will antagonize some Tory voters and push more of them to the right-wing Reform party.
It’s all happening at a perilous time for Sunak, who must also manage the fallout from firing Braverman. Though allied in their social conservatism and on issues including immigration, her position in Cabinet was increasingly a liability as her language became more strident. Her remark that homeless people sleep on streets as a “lifestyle choice” also angered Tories in recent days.
The breaking point appeared to come after Braverman accused London’s Metropolitan Police of bias over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests. Her intervention was blamed for drawing out far-right groups that clashed with officers in London and led to 145 arrests on Saturday.
Ousting her is likely to lead to Braverman becoming a fierce critic of the administration at a crucial time. The UK Supreme Court is due to rule on Wednesday on the legality of the government’s plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda, a plan championed by both Braverman and Sunak. If it rules against the government, politicians on the Tory right are likely to ramp up demands for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
Braverman is among those who have voiced her support for doing so, and the risk for Sunak is that he has now created martyr for the cause.
So the politics surrounding Sunak were febrile even before the Cameron announcement. In a statement on his new role, the former prime minister said the UK will “stand by our allies” and “make sure our voice is heard” on challenges from the Middle East to Ukraine.
Yet Cameron was notably dovish toward China during his premiership, a position that is now at adds with the increasingly anti-China sentiment in the Conservative Party. In 2020 Cameron was involved in efforts to raise a UK-China investment fund, but the effort struggled to gain traction.
“Cameron is out of step with Parliament and the country on China,” Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said on X, calling the move “incomprehensible and retrograde.”
He was the subject of controversy in 2021 when it emerged he had aggressively lobbied the government on behalf of the now-defunct Greensill Capital, the lender for which he was an adviser and in which he held shares. In his statement, Cameron also acknowledged he had publicly disagreed with Sunak on issues such as the recent cancellation of the flagship high-speed HS2 rail line.
Under Britain’s unwritten constitution someone must be either a member of Parliament or sit in the House of Lords to act as a government minister. Cameron has been made a life peer so he can take the role.
“It’s a pretty desperate, even absurd move which also will annoy a whole bunch of Tory MPs — in part because they despise Cameron, in part because it suggests Sunak thinks there’s so little talent in the Commons that he’s had to put a scandal-ridden former PM in the Lords in order to inject some supposed quality into his Cabinet,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University.
(Updates with reaction from seventh paragraph.)
Author: Joe Mayes, Emily Ashton, Kitty Donaldson and Alex Wickham