If you are going to produce a reshuffle rabbit out of a hat to end a disastrous internal feud, best make it a big beast lagomorph and pop him (David Cameron) into one of the most coveted roles in government – foreign secretary at a time of raging international conflicts and fevered skirmishes on the political home front.
Rishi Sunak’s dispatch of his over-excitable home secretary, Suella Braverman was, in the end a kinetic exit – albeit one delayed for too long – in the wake of an unapologetic social media rampage blasting pro-Palestinian demos.
The plan had been to leave a fissile Braverman in post until the Supreme Court issued a ruling this week, on the Rwanda plan to deter irregular asylum seekers. That plan was hastily torn up and instead, the answer was the return, as M & S might put it, of “not just any former prime minister”, but the longest-serving modernising incumbent David Cameron. By the curious magic of the British constitution at its most flexible, he is parachuted into the role while no longer being in the Commons as “Baron Cameron for life”.
This coup de théâtre tells us a number of original things about Sunak’s state of mind, and the state of the Tory party a year out from the general election. The first is that the PM is now conceding that his original “safe pair of hands”, technocratic approach to the job has failed. The ploy of farming out culture wars and wedge issues to voices on the reactive rightwing of his party has ended in a mighty pratfall.
The second point is that he has little faith in his own Premier League colleagues and aspirants to fill the most important Cabinet roles. The return of an ex PM, who oversaw an unproductive (to say the least) intervention in Libya and was exposed for an excess of zeal in lobbying for Lex Greensill, a blowhard failed supply chain lender whose investors are still attempting to recoup billions, is a sign of desperation.
Although it is an imaginative solution to revive the figure who, not coincidentally, first placed his faith in Sunak. Indeed, I recorded him telling me in 2015: “You must get to know Rishi – he’s the future of the party”.
Well, it has been quite a future since then and the scar of the decision to call the referendum (which Cameron plainly regrets) and impacts of having to manage the Brexit result still runs deep in the Tories.
It’s easy to see the downsides of this revival: Cameron has sought a place on the international stage (he was interested in roles from Nato, but the top table of international affairs has been slow to recover from the Brexit shockwave and allergic to most Brits, never mind the one who opened the Pandora’s box and lost). The Greensill link was always unwise, if lucrative – and the “ex-PM for sale” reputation has dogged him through many temporary or unsuccessful business projects; one as promoter of investment in a Sri Lankan-based project which has Chinese funding and strategic utility to Beijing.
The response of the party’s vociferous “China hawks” will be quite something to watch. But Sunak is himself keener on China engagement than a freeze (he told me in an interview around his AI summit a couple of weeks ago that China was “crucial” to attempts to regulate artificial intelligence).
Appointing Cameron as foreign secretary will, he hopes, restore more experience to a threadbare front bench team. Sunak, aside from his interest in international technology tie-ups, is an ingenue in foreign affairs and the combination of the Israel/Gaza crisis and Ukraine is testing the leadership’s bandwidth. With James Cleverly (one of the few new-generation trusted allies), moved to calm down the Home Office, the Tory leader hopes that a figure who has at least the tainted stardust of being a former leader will raise the UK’s profile abroad, while freeing up Sunak to focus on electoral strategy at home.
One of the many downsides of the Braverman debacle has been that as Labour splits have widened over the worsening situation in Gaza, Conservatives have been unable to focus on their opponents’ woes because they have been so mired in their own turf wars.
One other role that Cameron can fill with his affable ease, when he is in a good mood (which he ought to be, given this restoration out of political Valhalla) is that he is another “box office” politician people will turn out to listen to. The Government lacks star performers and even its most reliable top players – notably Jeremy Hunt as chancellor – failed to create the kind of buzz which, warts and all, Boris Johnson brought to the Tory brand.
Sunak also hopes Cameron will appeal to moderate shire voters in the “Blue Wall”, now clearly in danger from a Labour advance and Lib Dem pincer movement. Sceptics may ask what became of the “change candidate” Sunak who denigrated the “status quo” thinking of two decades ago at Tory conference a few weeks ago.
But desperate times call for a wild card solution. So, project “save the Tories” is now in the top-rank purview of Sunak, Cameron and Hunt – a mix as 2015 as Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’s Uptown Funk. Don’t believe me, just watch.
Anne McElvoy hosts the Power Play podcast for Politico. https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/decoding-ai-rishi-sunaks-call-for-action/id1202281739?i=1000633402622
