Sunak’s Cabinet: new faces and old

Rishi Sunak has furnished his new cabinet with some new faces, kept some from the last administration and resurrected some from the past.

As anticipated, Jeremy Hunt has been reappointed as Chancellor while James Cleverly will remain foreign secretary and Ben Wallace will stay as defence secretary, despite both backing Boris Johnson.

But in what can only be described as deeply humiliating for Penny Mordaunt, his one-time rival, she was not given a role in a big department, such as the Foreign Office, that she and her supporters were expecting. Instead, she will continue as leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council. 

In an even bigger surprise, Suella Braverman, who is a prominent member of the ERG and who had considered standing herself and only backed Sunak at the last minute, was brought back as Home Secretary just days after resigning from Liz Truss’s government. One explanation for this astonishing about-turn is that Braverman promised that she would bring other ERG MPs along with her. 

In total, Number 10’s new incumbent sacked around a third of his predecessor’s cabinet, rewarding a number of his loyalists with top jobs. Among the surprise appointments were Dominic Raab, who has been unwavering in his support for Sunak, and returns to the cabinet as justice secretary and deputy prime minister, the same position he held just over a month ago before he was sacked by Truss. 

Another key ally behind the scenes, Michael Gove, has replaced Truss loyalist Simon Clarke as levelling up secretary, while Mel Stride has taken over from Chloe Smith as pensions secretary. Grant Shapps has been appointed the new business secretary, ousting Jacob Rees-Mogg who resigned earlier in the day. And, in another seeming return to Johnson’s cabinet, Steve Barclay, his former chief of staff, has been given one of the biggest jobs of all, that of health secretary.

So what’s the first verdict on Sunak’s new cabinet? Commentators are divided, claiming there are too many of the old Johnson faces and not enough new.  But others claim that unlike Truss – who left herself vulnerable to backbench rebellions by forming a cabinet exclusively made up of loyalists – Sunak has at least reached across the party in a bid to heal Tory divisions. 

For example, the one-time Boris-stroke-Truss backer Nadhim Zahawi will remain in cabinet as party chairman, while Truss’s Health Secretary and number one buddy, Thérèse Coffey, stays alongside in cabinet, but as the new secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs.

Prior to his reshuffle, Sunak delivered his first address as PM on the Downing Street, claiming he would earn the public’s trust, just hours after Liz Truss delivered her last. 

While Truss defended the “bold” approach she had taken as prime minister, the incoming PM didn’t skirt around the economic chaos unleashed by Trussonomics. 

Though commending Truss’s “noble aim” of wanting to improve growth, “mistakes were made,” he added, “and I have been elected as leader of my party and your Prime Minister, in part, to try to fix them.”

Sunak pledged to bring “economic stability” and warned of “difficult decisions” ahead as he vowed to reduce public debt – a nod to looming public spending cuts.

Defending why he should not call an early general election, Sunak argued that the manifesto on which Johnson won a landslide victory in 2019 “is not the sole property of any one individual,” bur rather one he stood for too. 

Yet does Britain’s worsening economic woes leave him in a position to still deliver on all of these 2019 promises?

Yes, according to Sunak, who promised to see through the manifesto pledges of “a stronger NHS, better schools, safer streets, control of our borders, protecting our environment, supporting our armed forces, levelling up and building an economy that embraces the opportunities of Brexit”.

Realising these aims does however require investment in public services – at a time of impending spending cuts. The new PM has assigned himself a tricky task. The pound rose after the PM’s speech while gilt yields fell back. That is pointing in the right direction, for now. 

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