There is one in Rishi Sunak’s new cabinet Minister without a portfolio, her name is Esther McVey, comes from Liverpool and is responsible for the Kulturkampf department. The 56-year-old is supposed to appeal to the right-wing conservative electorate with attacks against the BBC and all those who are supposedly only working towards a change of government in London. The fact that Sunak chose McVey of all people is probably due to her “anti-woke agenda”. Apparently he needs someone like her to keep the right wing of the Tories happy. Among the right wingers The unrest is particularly great after Sunak appointed a declared opponent of Brexit as Foreign Minister: David Cameron.
With Lord Cameron, as he is now called, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, two Remainers now occupy key positions in the government. There is also James Cleverly as Home Secretary, who, like Sunak, is a Brexiteer, but is considered downright level-headed compared to his ultra-right predecessor Suella Braverman. So the Prime Minister has gathered three center-right pragmatists around him, no wonder the hardcore Brexiteers are getting nervous. One of them, Andrea Jenkyns, has already given Sunak a no-confidence vote and sent a letter to Graham Brady, chairman of the Tory backbenchers’ 1922 committee. The letter begins with the words “Enough is enough.” It is not known whether Brady received several more letters of this type, only this much: The committee plans to meet on Wednesday evening to discuss the situation.
In the polls, the Conservatives are 20 percentage points behind Labor
The situation doesn’t look too good for the Tories in these autumn days. In the polls, the Conservatives have been consistently 20 percentage points behind Labor since Sunak took office just over a year ago. With Cameron, the Prime Minister is now trying to catch up. The election will take place in January 2025 at the latest, probably earlier. The Prime Minister decides when exactly.
It remains to be seen how the new foreign minister will be received by the population, but it is clear that Sunak has achieved a surprise coup with Cameron’s appointment. Again Daily Telegraph Reportedly, the two are said to have met last Thursday for a conversation in the Prime Minister’s official residence. William Hague is said to have acted as a mediator; he was once foreign minister in Cameron’s cabinet. Hague said on Tuesday that the Lord Cameron idea did not come from him, but in a guest article for the Times He made it clear why, in his view, this had happened: Cameron’s appointment showed that Sunak wanted to demonstrate a break with the embarrassing Johnson years, wrote Hague, in which the government was “run in a vile, tense atmosphere, dominated by foul-mouthed people “, incompetent consultants”.
Sunak is apparently trying to distance himself from his predecessor Johnson
Well, Sunak was once part of Johnson’s cabinet as finance minister. Now he is apparently trying to distance himself from his predecessor by appointing Cameron, a political opponent of Johnson’s, as foreign minister. For David Frost, Johnson’s former Brexit minister, this is nothing other than a “throwback to the pre-Brexit days”. Jacob Rees-Mogg, also a confidant of Johnson, also criticized the Prime Minister for his personnel decision. The appointment of Cameron and the expulsion of Braverman could lead to many Tory voters being able to vote for the Reform Party, the successor party to the Brexit Party. Sunak also has to be careful that Cameron doesn’t overshadow him, said Rees-Mogg.
On Tuesday, Lord Cameron sat at the green cabinet table in Downing Street for the first time as Foreign Secretary. Sunak sat down opposite him. The prime minister tried to drive his new team like a motivational speaker, speaking of “big, bold decisions that will drive change.” When he looked around the table, he knew that he had a team full of energy and enthusiasm, said Sunak.
An important decision for the Prime Minister is due in London this Wednesday. Britain’s top court will make a ruling on whether the government can expel asylum seekers to Rwanda. The migration pact with Kigali is considered the prime minister’s “flagship policy”, i.e. a kind of showcase project. If the Supreme Court does not rule in Sunak’s favor, this will probably be a problem for the Prime Minister: the right wing of his party will then likely demand withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This means the next internal dispute within the Tories is imminent, as the new Home Secretary Cleverly has so far rejected such a step.
On Tuesday, his predecessor Braverman spoke up. In her resignation letter to the Prime Minister, she accused Sunak of never having any intention of keeping his promises on migration. “Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have suffered record election defeats, your restarts have failed and we are running out of time,” Braverman wrote. Her warning: “You need to change course urgently.”