LONDON — Rishi Sunak appointed David Cameron as Britain’s new foreign secretary — in a shock comeback for the former prime minister.
Cameron, who resigned as PM in 2016 and later quit as a member of parliament after losing the Brexit referendum, will become a life peer in the House of Lords in order to take on the government role.
The move comes as Sunak carries out a major reshuffle of his government ranks, in a bid to arrest his Conservative Party’s large deficit in opinion polling.
He kicked off the reshuffle Monday by firing Home Secretary Suella Braverman, a key figure on the party’s right. James Cleverly, previously foreign sec, takes over from Braverman at the interior ministry.
Cameron’s return on Monday to one of the highest positions in government sent shockwaves through Westminster and the Conservative Party.
It marks the first post-war example of a former prime minister serving in a successor’s Cabinet since the 1970s, when Conservative Alec Douglas-Home was named foreign secretary in Ted Heath’s government.
Although both are seen as Tory centrists, Sunak and Cameron campaigned on opposite sides of the 2016 Brexit referendum. Cameron — who led a coalition government in 2010 and pulled off a dramatic election victory for the Tories in 2015 — has recently been critical of the prime minister over his decision to axe key parts of the HS2 rail link.
The ex-PM’s reputation took a hit amid a lobbying scandal in 2021. His record on foreign policy is controversial among some Conservatives. As prime minister he heralded a so-called “Golden Era” in U.K. relations with China, and hosted President Xi Jinping for a state visit.
Cameron: I want to help Sunak deliver
In a statement following his appointment, Cameron said the U.K. would “stand by our allies, strengthen our partnerships and make sure our voice is heard.”
And he added: “Though I may have disagreed with some individual decisions, it is clear to me that Rishi Sunak is a strong and capable prime minister, who is showing exemplary leadership at a difficult time.
“I want to help him to deliver the security and prosperity our country needs and be part of the strongest possible team that serves the United Kingdom and that can be presented to the country when the general election is held.”
But Pat McFadden of the opposition Labour Party used the new hire to take a dig at Sunak, who has recently attempted to pitch himself against successive governments of all stripes.
“A few weeks ago, Rishi Sunak said David Cameron was part of a failed status quo, now he’s bringing him back as his life raft,” McFadden quipped.
LONDON — With one shock hire and one brutal sacking, Rishi Sunak has re-established his Conservative credentials. Just not the type many in his party wanted to see.
On one level, the British prime minister’s dramatic Cabinet reshuffle — executed Monday after a weekend of speculation — made a lot of sense. This was Sunak’s chance to stamp his authority on a ministerial team he partially inherited from his predecessors, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, and create a unit focused on delivering his own electoral message.
The unexpected appointment of former prime minister David Cameron as foreign secretary was designed to transmit seriousness, with the added bonus of drawing headlines away from Sunak’s decision to sack his firebrand home secretary, Suella Braverman.
In her stead Sunak appointed the calm and affable James Cleverly, who previously held the foreign affairs brief. A number of younger footsoldiers loyal to Sunak received promotions in the ensuing reshuffle.
But with an election looming next year, the strategy laid out by Sunak on Monday betrays a risky change of tack.
Only a few weeks ago the PM was trying to paint himself as the “change” candidate in the election, implicitly criticizing the previous 12 years of Conservative-led governments — including those of Cameron. That approach now appears to have been junked, in favor of more traditional Tory messaging about statesmanship and stability.
Running out of road
In truth, Sunak had little option but to be bold.
His party remains way behind in the polls, and neither a post-summer policy ‘reset’ nor a party conference speech scattered with disconnected policies managed to shift the dial.
Last week’s King’s Speech — which laid out Sunak’s legislative program for the next 12 months — was deemed lackluster, and he has little headroom for spending in next week’s autumn financial statement.
Sunak therefore opted to deploy a attention-grabbing reshuffle as one of the few levers he has left to pull before the next election.
A senior Downing Street official set out two guiding principles behind Monday’s reorganization: “Competence, and a united team focused on what the public want.”
For some parts of the Conservative Party, such a shift is long overdue.
With few other options, Sunak opted to deploy a attention-grabbing reshuffle as one of the few levers he has left to pull before the next election | Pool photo by Stefan Rousseau/AFP via Getty Images
One former Cabinet minister — granted anonymity, like others in this article, to speak frankly about the party’s fortunes — hailed the decision to bring back Cameron as “a masterstroke.” They believed it “will reassure the party and public that the Conservatives are serious about governing and winning.”
Similarly, Cleverly’s arrival at the Home Office and the demotion of Health Secretary Steve Barclay — seen as antagonistic in dealings with striking doctors — are both designed to steady the ship.
“Suella [Braverman] has been a problem,” said one Conservative candidate in a seat in northern England. “Cleverly will calm down the Home Office insanity and make it look as though we’re running a semi-competent government.”
Luke Tryl, director of the More in Common think tank, concludes the effect could be significant in more liberally-minded constituencies where Conservatives are under pressure from the Liberal Democrats, areas sometimes referred to as the Blue Wall.
“[Those voters] will feel quite reassured to have someone like David Cameron back,” Tryl said, “but also by Cleverly, who is far more of a team player than Braverman, even though they share some of the same views.”
Fight on the right
Sunak, however, risks playing into the long-held fears of conservative-minded colleagues that he is less right-wing than they had hoped.
“There’s always been this slight contradiction with Rishi in that his vibe is liberal or centrist,” notes Henry Hill, deputy editor of the Tory grassroots website ConservativeHome. “His actual views are quite right-wing.”
The Tory PM has tried to temper such fears by promoting Richard Holden, a punchy campaigner in a Red Wall seat, and Esther McVey, another high-profile MP from the north of England who is happy to lean into the culture wars.
The risk for Sunak is that neither wing of his divided party — nor either half of his fragile voter coalition — will be convinced.
A former No. 10 aide on the right of the party asked: “Do I right now have confidence that this is a party which will take a strong stance on things I care about? No.”
One blue-collar Conservative said his views on Sunak’s reshuffle were “unprintable.”
And a second former Cabinet minister warned that if Sunak’s electoral calculation is to shore up Blue Wall votes, it may anyway be too late. “That horse hasn’t so much bolted, as died,” they said.
Sunak risks playing into the long-held fears of conservative-minded colleagues that he is less right-wing than they had hoped | Pool photo by Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images
One Tory strategist warned the reshuffle could see Sunak lose further vote share to the upstart Reform party on the Tories’ right flank, which is currently polling at about 8 percent.
“If it increases then this will look like a very bad move,” they noted. “That number can flip a lot of Tory seats.”
Rishi’s ‘spad-ocracy’
The promotion of Holden — a former special adviser, or spad — and others ex-staffers like him have also drawn criticism from some of the Tory party’s older hands.
The ex-No. 10 aide quoted above described the new-look government as a “spad-ocracy,” adding: “I can see they’re trying to get fresh faces in, but it is a bit of a slap in the face to the rest of the parliamentary party.”
Given Monday also saw a mass exodus of experienced and respected middle-ranking office holders such as Science Minister George Freeman, some fear the PM’s “competence” narrative has already been undermined.
There were internal protests too over the sacking of Rachel Maclean as housing minister — a role which has now been held by 16 different people in the last 13 years.
For its part, the opposition Labour Party was gleeful about Sunak’s decision to abandon the “change” candidate narrative he recently embarked upon by rolling back the HS2 rail project and certain net zero measures.
“It’s a gift to us,” one Labour strategist said. “He said he was changing the consensus. [But Cameron] is the man who started the 13-year Tory consensus in the first place.”
Sunak must now pin his hopes on a slowly-improving economy and the ability to demonstrate competence after the chaos of Johnson and Truss, says More In Common’s Tryl.
”The truth is it’s a real long shot,” Tryl added. “But in a bad hand, that is the card they’ve got to play.”
LONDON — The gloves are off in the U.K. government’s deepening spat with tech giant Meta.
On Wednesday, Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman unveiled a fresh campaign aimed at making the Mark Zuckerberg-led tech giant rethink its plan to roll out end-to-end encryption on Facebook and Instagram — a move she says will hamper the police’s ability to catch pedophiles.
At a background briefing for reporters on Tuesday, Home Office officials used graphic language to describe the types of child sexual abuse material that they say risks going undetected if Meta goes ahead with its plans. A video put together as part of the campaign features a victim of child sex abuse appealing directly to Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg to rethink plans to roll out encryption.
The National Crime Agency has estimated that making messages on Facebook Messenger and Instagram end-to-end encrypted will wipe out more than 85 percent of the platforms’ reports of online child sexual abuse material.
Meta, which aims to finalize the encryption rollout by the end of the year, has said it plan to continue policing its platforms for grooming and the sharing of child abuse content. It will do this by, for example, watching for suspicious behavior from accounts and providing a range of controls to help kids avoid harm.
But Braverman said she’s not yet been convinced that these measures will make up for the shortfall in reports that the encryption changes are expected to bring about, prompting her to write to the tech giant in July asking it to stop its encryption rollout if it can’t give stronger assurances.
“Meta has failed to provide assurances that they will keep their platforms safe from sickening abusers,” Braverman said in a press release. “They must develop appropriate safeguards to sit alongside their plans for end-to-end encryption.”
“We don’t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security,” said a Meta spokesperson.
The company on Wednesday also published an updated report setting out these measures, such as restricting people over 19 from messaging teens who don’t follow them and using technology to identify and take action against malicious behaviour.
The bill, which passed its final parliamentary hurdle Tuesday, would empower Britain’s comms regulator Ofcom to force tech companies to monitor messenger apps for illegal child abuse content. That’s proven controversial, with dozens of cryptography experts saying that the powers would effectively undermine end-to-end encryption — tech that enables only the sender and receiver to view messages.
Tech execs like Signal’s Meredith Whittaker and WhatsApp’s Will Cathcart have suggested they’d rather have their encrypted services blocked in the U.K. than undermine privacy for millions of users on their apps.
But Ofcom officials have previously said there’d be a high bar for them to mandate monitoring on encrypted apps, while any order for Meta to scan its messenger apps for content would prove highly contentious for the regulator.
That’s what’s prompted the U.K. government to lobby for Meta to rethink its plans in the first place.
“We urge companies looking to introduce end-to-end encryption to their services to think carefully about the impact on younger, vulnerable users,” said Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of child protection group the Internet Watch Foundation in a statement.
LONDON — It was clear when Boris Johnson was forced from Downing Street that British politics had changed forever.
But few could have predicted that less than six months later, all angry talk of a cross-Channel trade war would be a distant memory, with Britain and the EU striking a remarkable compromise deal over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland.
Private conversations with more than a dozen U.K. and EU officials, politicians and diplomats reveal how the Brexit world changed completely after Johnson’s departure — and how an “unholy trinity” of little-known civil servants, ensconced in a gloomy basement in Brussels, would mastermind a seismic shift in Britain’s relationship with the Continent.
They were aided by an unlikely sequence of political events in Westminster — not least an improbable change of mood under the combative Liz Truss; and then the jaw-dropping rise to power of the ultra-pragmatic Rishi Sunak. Even the amiable figure of U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly would play his part, glad-handing his way around Europe and smoothing over cracks that had grown ever-wider since 2016.
As Sunak’s Conservative MPs pore over the detail of his historic agreement with Brussels — and await the all-important verdict of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland — POLITICO has reconstructed the dramatic six-month shift in Britain’s approach that brought us to the brink of the Brexit deal we see today.
Bye-bye Boris
Johnson’s departure from Downing Street, on September 6, triggered an immediate mood shift in London toward the EU — and some much-needed optimism within the bloc about future cross-Channel relations.
For key figures in EU capitals, Johnson would always be the untrustworthy figure who signed the protocol agreement only to disown it months afterward.
In Paris, relations were especially poisonous, amid reports of Johnson calling the French “turds”; endless spats with the Elysée over post-Brexit fishing rights, sausages and cross-Channel migrants; and Britain’s role in the AUKUS security partnership, which meant the loss of a multi-billion submarine contract for France. Paris’ willingness to engage with Johnson was limited in the extreme.
Truss, despite her own verbal spats with French President Emmanuel Macron — and her famously direct approach to diplomacy — was viewed in a different light. Her success at building close rapport with negotiating partners had worked for her as trade secretary, and once she became prime minister, she wanted to move beyond bilateral squabbles and focus on global challenges, including migration, energy and the war in Ukraine.
“Boris had become ‘Mr. Brexit,’” one former U.K. government adviser said. “He was the one the EU associated with the protocol, and obviously [Truss] didn’t come with the same baggage. She had covered the brief, but she didn’t have the same history. As prime minister, Liz wanted to use her personal relationships to move things on — but that wasn’t the same as a shift in the underlying substance.”
Indeed, Truss was still clear on the need to pass the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would have given U.K. ministers powers to overrule part of the protocol unilaterally, in order to ensure leverage in the talks with the European Commission.
Truss also triggered formal dispute proceedings against Brussels for blocking Britain’s access to the EU’s Horizon Europe research program. And her government maintained Johnson’s refusal to implement checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, causing deep irritation in Brussels.
But despite the noisy backdrop, tentative contact with Brussels quietly resumed in September, with officials on both sides trying to rebuild trust. Truss, however, soon became “very disillusioned by the lack of pragmatism from the EU,” one of her former aides said.
“The negotiations were always about political will, not technical substance — and for whatever reason, the political will to compromise from the Commission was never there when Liz, [ex-negotiator David] Frost, Boris were leading things,” they said.
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation outside 10 Downing Street in central London on October 20, 2022 | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Truss, of course, would not be leading things for long. An extraordinary meltdown of the financial markets precipitated her own resignation in late October, after just six weeks in office. Political instability in Westminster once again threatened to derail progress.
But Sunak’s arrival in No. 10 Downing Street — amid warnings of a looming U.K. recession — gave new impetus to the talks. An EU official said the mood music improved further, and that discussions with London became “much more constructive” as a result.
David Lidington, a former deputy to ex-PM Theresa May who played a key role in previous Brexit negotiations, describes Sunak as a “globalist” rather than an “ultra-nationalist,” who believes Britain ought to have “a sensible, friendly and grown-up relationship” with Brussels outside the EU.
During his time as chancellor, Sunak was seen as a moderating influence on his fellow Brexiteer Cabinet colleagues, several of whom seemed happy to rush gung-ho toward a trade war with the EU.
“Rishi has always thought of the protocol row as a nuisance, an issue he wanted to get dealt with,” the former government adviser first quoted said.
One British officialsuggested the new prime minister’s reputation for pragmatism gave the U.K. negotiating team “an opportunity to start again.”
Sunak’s slow decision-making and painstaking attention to detail — the subject of much criticism in Whitehall — proved useful in calming EU jitters about the new regime, they added.
“When he came in, it wasn’t just the calming down of the markets. It was everyone across Europe and in the U.S. thinking ‘OK, they’re done going through their crazy stage,’” the same officialsaid. “It’s the time he takes with everything, the general steadiness.”
EU leaders “have watched him closely, they listened to what he said, and they have been prepared to trust him and see how things go,” Lidington noted.
Global backdrop
As months of chaos gave way to calm in London, the West was undergoing a seismic reorganization.
Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a flurry of coordinated work for EU and U.K. diplomats — including sanctions, military aid, reconstruction talks and anti-inflation packages. A sense began to emerge that it was in both sides’ common interest to get the Northern Ireland protocol row out of the way.
“The war in Ukraine has completely changed the context over the last year,” an EU diplomat said.
A second U.K. official agreed. “Suddenly we realized that the 2 percent of the EU border we’d been arguing about was nothing compared to the massive border on the other side of the EU, which Putin was threatening,” they said. “And suddenly there wasn’t any electoral benefit to keeping this row over Brexit going — either for us or for governments across the EU.”
A quick glance at the electoral calendar made it clear 2023 offered the last opportunity to reach a deal in the near future, with elections looming for both the U.K. and EU parliaments the following year — effectively putting any talks on ice.
“Rishi Sunak would have certainly been advised by his officials that come 2024, the EU is not going to be wanting to take any new significant initiatives,” Lidington said. “And we will be in election mode.”
The upcoming 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement on April 10 heaped further pressure on the U.K. negotiators, amid interest from U.S. President Joe Biden in visiting Europe to mark the occasion.
“The anniversary was definitely playing on people’s minds,” the first U.K. official said.“Does [Sunak] really want to be the prime minister when there’s no government in Northern Ireland on the anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement?”
The pressure was ramped up further when Biden specifically raised the protocol in a meeting with Truss at the U.N. General Assembly in New York in late September, after which British officials said they expected the 25th anniversary to act as a “key decision point” on the dispute.
The King and I
Whitehall faced further pressure from another unlikely source — King Charles III, who was immediately planning a state visit to Paris within weeks of ascending the throne in September 2022. Truss had suggested delaying the visit until the protocol row was resolved, according to two European diplomats.
The monarch is now expected to visit Paris and Berlin at the end of March — and although his role is strictly apolitical, few doubt he is taking a keen interest in proceedings. He has raised the protocol in recent conversations with European diplomats, showing a close engagement with the detail.
One former senior diplomat involved in several of the king’s visits said that Charles has long held “a private interest in Ireland, and has wanted to see if there was an appropriately helpful role he could play in improving relations [with the U.K].”
By calling the deal the Windsor framework and presenting it at a press conference in front of Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences, No. 10 lent Monday’s proceedings an unmistakable royal flavor.
The king also welcomed von der Leyen for tea at the castle following the signing of the deal. A Commission spokesperson insisted their meeting was “separate” from the protocol discussion talks. Tory MPs were skeptical.
Cleverly does it
The British politician tasked with improving relations with Brussels was Foreign Secretary Cleverly, appointed by Truss last September. He immediately began exploring ways to rebuild trust with Commission Vice-President and Brexit point-man Maroš Šefčovič, the second U.K. official cited said.
His first hurdle was a perception in Brussels that the British team had sabotaged previous talks by leaking key details to U.K. newspapers and hardline Tory Brexiteers for domestic political gain. As a result, U.K. officials made a conscious effort to keep negotiations tightly sealed, a No. 10 official said.
“The relationship with Maroš improved massively when we agreed not to carry out a running commentary” on the content of the discussions, the second U.K. official added.
This meant keeping key government ministers out of the loop, including Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, an arch-Brexiteer who had been brought back onto the frontbench by Truss.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is welcomed by European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič ahead of a meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on February 17, 2023 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
The first U.K. official said Baker would have “felt the pain,” as he had little to offer his erstwhile backbench colleagues looking for guidance while negotiations progressed, “and that was a choice by No. 10.”
Cleverly and Šefčovič “spent longer than people think just trying to build rapport,” the second U.K. officialsaid, with Cleverly explaining the difficulties the protocol was raising in Northern Ireland and Šefčovič insistent that key economic sectors were in fact benefiting from the arrangement.
Cleverly also worked at the bilateral relationship with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while Sunak made efforts to improve ties with French President Emmanuel Macron, Lidington noted.
A British diplomat based in Washington said Cleverly had provided “a breath of fresh air” after the “somewhat stiff” manner of his predecessors, Truss and the abrasive Dominic Raab.
By the Conservative party conference in early October, the general mood among EU diplomats in attendance was one of expectation. And the Birmingham jamboree did not disappoint.
Sorry is the hardest word
Baker, who had once described himself as a “Brexit hard man,” stunned Dublin by formally apologizing to the people of Ireland for his past comments, just days before technical talks between the Commission and the U.K. government were due to resume.
“I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty,” he said. “Some of our actions were not very respectful of Ireland’s legitimate interests. I want to put that right.”
The apology was keenly welcomed in Dublin, where Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister at the time, called it “honest and very, very helpful.”
Irish diplomats based in the U.K. met Baker and other prominent figures from the European Research Group of Tory Euroskeptics at the party conference, where Baker spoke privately of his “humility” and his “resolve” to address the issues, a senior Irish diplomat said.
“Resolve was the keyword,” the envoy said. “If Steve Baker had the resolve to work for a transformation of relationships between Ireland and the U.K., then we thought — there were tough talks to be had — but a sustainable deal was now a possibility.”
There were other signs of rapprochement. Just a few hours after Baker’s earth-shattering apology, Truss confirmed her attendance at the inaugural meeting in Prague of the European Political Community, a new forum proposed by Macron open to both EU and non-EU countries.
Sunak at the wheel
The momentum snowballed under Sunak, who decided within weeks of becoming PM to halt the passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in the House of Lords, reiterating Britain’s preference for a negotiated settlement. In exchange, the Commission froze a host of infringement proceedings taking aim at the way the U.K. was handling the protocol. This created space for talks to proceed in a more cordial environment.
An EU-U.K. agreement in early January allowed Brussels to start using a live information system detailing goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, seen as key to unlocking a wider agreement on physical checks under the protocol.
The U.K. also agreed to conduct winter technical negotiations in Brussels, rather than alternating rounds between the EU capital and London, as was the case when Frost served as Britain’s chief negotiator.
Trust continued to build. Suddenly the Commission was open to U.K. solutions such as the “Stormont brake,” a clause giving the Northern Ireland Assembly power of veto over key protocol machinations, which British officials did not believe Brussels would accept when they first pitched them.
The Stormont brake was discussed “relatively early on,” a third U.K. official said. “Then we spent a huge amount of effort making sure nobody knew about it. It was kept the most secret of secret things.”
Yet a second EU diplomat claimed the ideas in the deal were not groundbreaking and could have been struck “years ago” if Britain had a prime minister with enough political will to solve the dispute. “None of the solutions that have been found now is revolutionary,” they said.
An ally of Johnson described the claim he was a block on progress as “total nonsense.”
The ‘unholy trinity’
Away from the media focus, a group of seasoned U.K. officials began to engage with their EU counterparts in earnest. But there was one (not so) new player in town.
Tim Barrow, a former U.K. permanent representative to the EU armed with a peerless contact book, had been an active figure in rebuilding relations with the bloc since Truss appointed him national security adviser. He acquired a more prominent role in the protocol talks after Sunak dispatched him to Brussels in January 2023, hoping EU figures would see him as “almost one of them,” another adviser to Sunak said.
Ensconced in the EU capital, Barrow and his U.K. team of negotiators took over several meeting rooms in the basement of the U.K. embassy, while staffers were ordered to keep quiet about their presence.
Besides his work on Northern Ireland trade, Barrow began to appear in meetings with EU representatives about other key issues creating friction in the EU-U.K. relationship, including discussions on migration alongside U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
Barrow “positioned himself very well,” the first EU diplomat quoted above said. “He’s very close to the prime minister — everybody in Brussels and London knows he’s got his ear. He’s very knowledgeable while very political.”
But other British officials insist Barrow’s presence was not central to driving through the deal. “He has been a figure, but not the only figure,” the U.K. adviser quoted above said. “It’s been a lot of people, actually, over quite a period of time.”
When it came to the tough, detailed technical negotiations, the burden fell on the shoulders of Mark Davies — the head of the U.K. taskforce praised for his mastery of the protocol detail — and senior civil servant and former director of the Northern Ireland Office, Brendan Threlfall.
The three formed an “unholy trinity,” as described by the first U.K. official, with each one bringing something to the table.
Davies was “a classic civil servant, an unsung hero,”the official said, while Threlfall “has good connections, good understanding” and “Tim has met all the EU interlocutors over the years.”
Sitting across the table, the EU team was led by Richard Szostak, a Londoner born to Polish parents and a determined Commission official with a great CV and an affinity for martial arts. His connection to von der Leyen was her deputy head of cabinet until recently, Stéphanie Riso, a former member of Brussels’ Brexit negotiating team who developed a reputation for competence on both sides of the debate.
Other senior figures at the U.K. Cabinet Office played key roles, including Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and senior official Sue Gray.
The latter — a legendary Whitehall enforcer who adjudicated over Johnson’s “Partygate” scandal — has a longstanding connection to Northern Ireland, famously taking a career break in the late 1980s to run a pub in Newry, where she has family links. More recently, she spent two years overseeing the finance ministry.
Gray has been spotted in Stormont at crunch points over the past six months as Northern Ireland grapples with the pain of the continued absence of an executive.
Some predict Gray could yet play a further role, in courting the Democratic Unionist Party as the agreement moves forward in the weeks ahead.
For U.K. and EU officials, the agreement struck with Brussels represented months of hard work — but for Sunak and his Cabinet colleagues, the hardest yards may yet lie ahead.
This story was updated to clarify two parts of the sourcing.
TIRANA, Albania — Albania’s prime minister said Tuesday that Britain is carrying out a “calculated attack” on his country by blaming it for the increased number of migrants crossing the English Channel.
Edi Rama said that the new U.K. Cabinet was scapegoating Albanians because it “has gone down a blind alley with its new policy resulting from Brexit.”
Britain has seen more than 40,000 migrants crossing the Channel in small boats this year, a record high. Almost a third are Albanians, according to the U.K. government.
The U.K. and France signed an agreement Monday that will see more police patrol beaches in northern France in an attempt to stop migrants from trying to cross in small boats.
British authorites accuse Albanian criminal gangs of “abusing” Britain’s asylum system and modern slavery laws.
Ged McCann, intelligence manager at the National Crime Agency, said organized crime groups from Albania were “effectively bringing in the labor force” for illegal marijuana-growing operations in boats across the English Channel.
“Many individuals that are arrested in cannabis (farms) arrived in the country a matter of days before on small boats,” he said.
U.K. interior minister Suella Braverman has described the cross arrivals as an “invasion on our southern coast” — words that drew criticism at home and abroad. Rama blasted her words as a “crazy narrative” and attempt to cover up for the U.K.’s failed borders policies.
“The fact there came no apology shows it was a calculated attack,” he added Tuesday.
Rama said that visa liberalization would help lower the number of people arriving illegally, but the U.K. government’s policy is “completely the reverse.”
“The British government has launched a blind alley road with its new policy that has resulted from Brexit,” he said at a news conference.
Last week, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office said it was “extremely grateful” for Albania’s cooperation on managing migration.
Sunak has described the migrant crisis as a “serious and escalating problem.” He acknowledged that “not enough” asylum claims are being processed, but maintained his Conservative government was getting a grip on the situation.
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Jill Lawless contributed to this report from London.
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Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration and Llazar Semini at https://twitter.com/lsemini
PARIS — The interior ministers of France and Britain on Monday signed a joint agreement to try to curb migration across the English channel — a regular source of friction between the two countries.
The British government has agreed to pay up some 72.2 million euros to France in 2022-2023 in exchange for France increasing its security presence by 40% across sea access points on the coast.
This represents 350 more gendarmes and police guarding beaches in Calais and Dunkirk.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin and British Home Secretary Suella Braverman signed the agreement in Paris.
The pact contains proposals to fight crime across the regular migration routes, with the two ministers agreeing that their countries would harvest information from intercepted migrants to help tackle smuggling networks.
“Technological and human resources” including drones could be used on the French coast to better intercept boats, the agreement adds.
No specific target for boat interceptions was included in the agreement.
Britain has said that over 40,000 migrants have landed on English beaches this year alone.
Delegates landing in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh for U.N. climate talks this week are a global elite bent on tearing down national borders, stripping away individual freedoms and condemning working people to a life of poverty.
That dark view is held by a range of far-right or populist parties — among them Donald Trump’s Republicans, who are seeking to retake control in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections. Some of these radicals are rampaging through elections in Europe while others, such as Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro last week, have been defeated only narrowly.
Republican and Trump acolyte Lauren Boebert derides the environmentalist agenda as “America last;” Britain’s Brexit-backing Home Secretary Suella Braverman says the country is in thrall to a “tofu-eating wokerati;” and in Spain, senior figures in the far-right Vox party dismiss the U.N.’s climate agenda as “cultural Marxism.”
Right-wingers of various strains around the world have co-opted climate change into their culture war. The fact this is happening in countries that produce a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions has alarmed some green advocates.
“Reactionary populism is now the biggest obstacle to tackling climate change,” wrote three climate leaders, including Brazil’s former Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira, in a recent commentary.
In the U.S., Republicans are eyeing a return to power in one or both houses of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Many at the COP27 talks will be reliving the first week of the U.N. climate conference in Morocco six years ago when Trump’s election struck the climate movement like a hurricane.
A Republican surge would gnaw at the fragile confidence that has built around global climate efforts since President Joe Biden’s election, raising the specter of a second Trump term and perhaps the withdrawal — again — of the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Paris climate deal.
“I don’t want to think about that,” said Teixeira’s co-author Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat who led the design of the Paris Agreement and who now leads the European Climate Foundation.
Some on the American right are pushing a more conciliatory message than others. “Republicans have solutions to reduce world emissions while providing affordable, reliable, and clean energy to our allies across the globe,” said Utah Congressman John Curtis, who will lead a delegation from his party to COP27.
Tubiana and others in the environmental movement are trying to put on a brave face. They argue Republicans won’t want to tamper too much with Biden’s behemoth Inflation Reduction Act, which contains measures to promote clean energy.
“You might see railing against it, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of political talk and rhetoric, but I don’t expect that would be a focus for the Republicans,” said Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a green NGO based in Arlington, Virginia. Nevertheless, if Republicans take both houses, “we certainly won’t make any progress,” Keohane said.
Trump’s first term and the presidency of Brazil’s Bolsonaro — which ended in a narrow defeat in last month’s election — now look like the opening skirmishes in a struggle in which the planet’s stability is at stake.
In parts of Europe, the right present their policies as sympathetic to the risks of climate change while dismissing internationally sanctioned action as sinister elitism that threatens their voters’ prosperity.
“The Sweden Democrats are not climate deniers, whatever that means,” Swedish far-right leader Jimmie Åkesson told a crowd days before a September election that saw his party win big. But Sweden’s current climate plans, Åkesson said, were “100 percent symbolic” rather than meaningful. “All that leads to is that we get poorer, that our lives get worse.”
This is the gibbet on which the far right are hanging environmentalism: depicting them as the witting or unwitting cavalry of global elites.
“We consider it to be a globalist movement that intends to end all borders, intends to end our freedom, intends to end our freedom for our identities,” Javier Cortés, president of the Seville chapter of Spain’s far-right Vox party, said in an interview with POLITICO. “We are not in favor of CO2 emissions. On the contrary, we want to respect the environment. All we are saying is that the European Union has to clarify that it wants to sell us a climate religion in which we cannot emit CO2, while we make our industries disappear from Europe and we need to buy from China.”
To describe this as climate denial — a common but often inaccurate charge — would be to miss the point that this is now just another front in the culture wars.
Online disinformation about the last U.N. climate talks was largely focused on the hypocrisy and elitism of those attending, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). The main spreaders weren’t websites and figures traditionally associated with climate denial, but culture war celebrities such as psychologist Jordan Peterson, Rebel Media’s Ezra Levant and Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams.
Populist attacks on globalism “rely on a well-funded transnational network,” said Tubiana. “It warrants serious scrutiny.”
But while economic interests may be powering parts of the movement, there is also a sense of political opportunism at work. Huge changes to the economy will be needed to lower emissions at the speed dictated by U.N.-brokered global climate goals. There will be winners and losers — and the losers may gravitate toward populists pledging to take up their cause.
“Far-right organizations are recognizing this as a potentially lucrative topic that they can win votes or support on,” said Balsa Lubarda, head of the ideology research unit at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.
Loving the losers
The far right’s focus on the losers has been “turbo charged” by the energy crisis, said Jennie King, head of civic action and education at ISD, which populists have wrongly argued is the fault of green policy. The European Parliament’s coalition of far-right parties has grown and capitalized on the energy crisis by joining with center-right parties to vote down environmental legislation.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson — newly elected with Åkesson’s support — aims to dilute the country’s ambitions for cutting some greenhouse gas emissions, a move center-right Liberal Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari justified in familiar terms: “That is a reaction to the reality people are facing.” And in Britain, Brexit leader Nigel Farage retooled his campaign to become an anti-net zero mouthpiece.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right | Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images
Strains of right-wing ecology may also mean that not all groups are actively hostile to the climate agenda, said Lubarda. Italy’s new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a huge fan of the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, which center on the Shire, an idealized bucolic homeland. Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right, but the protection of national economic interests still comes first.
“There is no more convinced ecologist than a conservative, but what distinguishes us from a certain ideological environmentalism is that we want to defend nature with man inside,” she said in her inaugural speech to parliament last month.
While Meloni has announced that she will attend COP27, she has also renamed the Ministry for the Ecological Transition the Ministry for Environment and Energy Security. The governing program of her Brothers of Italy party includes a section on climate change, but it strongly emphasizes the need to protect industry.
It’s this broad sense of demotion and delay that alarms those who are watching these ideas grow in stature among populists on the right. They say that while it may not sound like climate denial, the result is effectively the same.
“You can say that you are climate friends,” said Belgian Socialist MEP Marie Arena. “But in the act, you are not at all. You are business friends first.”
Jacopo Barragazzi, Charlie Duxbury and Zack Colman contributed to this report.
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LONDON — She’s already been forced to resign as U.K. home secretary once this fall.
And now scandal-hit Suella Braverman — controversially restored to her role by new PM Rishi Sunak just last week — is clinging to her job for a second time over claims she broke the law by holding thousands of undocumented migrants in bleakly unsuitable conditions at a former military base in southeast England.
In a statement to the House of Commons Monday, the Tory hard-liner denied widespread reports that she personally prevented officials from mass-booking hotel rooms for hundreds of asylum seekers who could no longer be hosted at the overcrowded Manston processing facility in Kent. Experts said if proven this could amount to a breach of the ministerial code — a resigning matter.
“Like the majority of the British people I am very concerned about hotels, but I never blocked their usage,” Braverman insisted, as opposition MPs called for her to resign. “As a former attorney general, I know the importance of taking legal advice into account.”
The Manston site is currently holding about 4,000 people, more than three times its maximum capacity of 1,600. Many are being forced to stay far longer than the legally permitted 24 hours. Reports suggest hundreds are sleeping on bare floors, and that disease is rife.
David Neal, the U.K. government’s independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, told MPs last week he was left speechless by the “wretched conditions.” He revealed some migrants from Afghanistan had been held in a marquee for 32 days, though the facility is designed only to host people for a maximum 24 hours while they undergo checks before being transferred to detention centers or hotels.
The crisis has been triggered by a huge increase in the number of undocumented migrants attempting to cross the English Channel — numbering nearly 40,000 so far this year, according to Ministry of Defense figures. On Sunday alone some 468 people made the dangerous journey in eight boats, the MoD said.
Since leaving the EU, the U.K. has been asking for a bilateral deal with France and the wider EU bloc to return those crossing the Channel to the first country deemed safe they enter into. So far, none has been forthcoming.
“The system is broken,” Braverman admitted. “Illegal migration is out of control and too many people are more interested in playing political parlor games, covering up the truth, rather than solving the problem.”
She said the Home Office is currently negotiating extra accommodation for undocumented migrants with private providers and considering “all available options” to tackle overcrowding at processing centers in the U.K.
She also told MPs she was “appalled” to learn, on her first appointment as home secretary in September, that there were “over 35,000 migrants” staying in hotels around the U.K. at an “exorbitant cost” to the British taxpayer. She instigated an urgent review into alternative options, she said, but that the department has continued procuring hotel rooms in the meantime.
But earlier Monday, local Conservative MP Roger Gale described the overcrowding at the Manston facility as “wholly unacceptable” and suggested the situation may have been allowed to happen “deliberately.”
“I was told that the Home Office was finding it very difficult to secure hotel accommodation,” he said. “I now understand this was a policy issue, and that a decision was taken not to book additional hotel space.”
The accusations add to the pressure on the home secretary, whose return to the Cabinet last week was widely questioned given she had been forced to quit only six days earlier after being caught using her personal email account to share sensitive government documents.
A Home Office review published Monday found Braverman sent six Home Office documents to her personal email address between September 15 and October 16. One was then forwarded on to a backbench ally for his perusal — a clear breach of security rules.
Striking a defiant tone, Braverman admitted to having made mistakes but insisted the broader claims about her conduct were a conspiracy to keep her out of high office. She told MPs that some people would like to “get rid” of her, adding: “Let them try.”
A Braverman ally conceded the home secretary is “in great difficulty” but warned she had “deliberately put in an impossible position by those who would rather her not to hang around.”
“The pressure is not easing in any way, and I think it may be too much for her.”
LONDON — If his key appointments are any indication, the Rishi Sunak era in Britain could actually be … kind of dull.
The new U.K. leader reappointed existing ministers, brought back old hands and largely kept critics on side as he sought to reassure nervous markets, allies and enemies that the U.K. is no longer a hotbed of chaos.
But the prime minister did, at least, have room to take revenge on a number of his most vocal detractors, and refused to offer any kind of promotion to his defeated leadership rival, Penny Mordaunt.
Sunak entered No. 10 Downing Street Tuesday with a promise to “fix” the “mistakes” made by his predecessor Liz Truss, after her radical economic prospectus spooked financial markets and helped jack up U.K. borrowing costs — swiftly bringing down her government amid bitter Tory recriminations and sparking a second Tory leadership race in two months.
Emerging from the wreckage of the Conservative Party, Sunak had pledged to put politics aside and “build a government that represents the very best traditions of my party.”
Nothing to see here
The biggest news of the reshuffle was that there wasn’t much news. Multiple figures who served under Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss, including some who backed his rival Boris Johnson in the latest Conservative leadership race, kept their posts or were moved to other senior roles.
Sunak’s most important appointment was to keep Jeremy Hunt in post as chancellor, sticking by a Cabinet veteran who Truss had brought in from the cold just two weeks earlier to rip up her failed economic agenda.
James Cleverly was kept on as foreign secretary, while Ben Wallace remained as defense secretary — keeping two key ministries tasked with shaping Britain’s foreign policy intact. Chris Heaton-Harris stayed on as Northern Ireland secretary, while Nadhim Zahawi was moved from the Cabinet Office to become the Conservative Party chairman. All four men had backed Johnson in the leadership contest last week, leaving fellow Boris supporters in the party relieved.
“At this early stage of the reshuffle it looks as if Rishi is aiming to unite the party rather than divide it,” said Tory MP and Johnson ally Michael Fabricant. “Perhaps one of the mistakes Liz Truss made was to pack the Cabinet only with her supporters. That always creates a volatile situation.”
In an eyebrow-raising move, Suella Braverman, a darling of the party’s right who made her own bid for the leadership earlier this year, returned as home secretary less than a week after being fired over a sensitive information leak. Her reappointment looked like a debt being repaid following her unexpected backing of Sunak at the weekend.
Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch and Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan, both Truss picks over the summer, kept their jobs too.
One Cabinet minister who did not back Sunak in either leadership race said the appointments were clearly a bid for unity: “He has put people in positions with a track record of delivery.”
Senior figures from other wings of the party were impressed too. “The new prime minister is clearly serious about including people from all sides of the party in his new Cabinet,” said Nicky Morgan, a former chair of the centrist One Nation Conservatives grouping in parliament and now a member of the House of Lords. “This is a very encouraging start to his term.”
Soft revenge
Others key allies of Sunak’s opponents were handed demotions, but allowed to remain in Sunak’s top team.
Thérèse Coffey, a close friend of Truss who served as her deputy prime minister and health secretary, was demoted to the environment, food and farming brief. Alok Sharma, who backed Johnson in the second race, kept his job overseeing the COP climate summits, but will no longer attend Cabinet — a clear step down.
But it was the treatment of Mordaunt, the last candidate standing against Sunak in the latest leadership race, that most ruffled feathers. She kept her relatively junior Cabinet-attending job as leader of the House of Commons, a decision seen in Westminster as a snub given widespread expectations that she was due a major promotion.
One former Cabinet minister argued the failure to promote Mordaunt looked like “an act of revenge, or small-mindedness.” Mordaunt had refused to drop out of the latest leadership race until it was clear she did not have sufficient nominations from fellow MPs to make the next round.
Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt leaves No. 10 Downing Street following Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s cabinet reshuffle | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Yet some argued the very act of keeping her in post was in itself an olive branch, while one person familiar with the discussions on her appointment said she had been offered a different role, but refused it. One of Mordaunt’s allies insisted she was pleased to keep her existing brief.
A Downing Street official insisted: “This Cabinet brings the talents of the party together. It reflects a unified party and a Cabinet with significant experience, ensuring that at this uncertain time there is continuity at the heart of government.”
But there were plenty of rewards too for key Sunak supporters. Close allies Oliver Dowden, Michael Gove and Steve Barclay were handed roles in the Cabinet Office, communities department and health department respectively, just weeks after Truss made clear they had no place in her administration.
Simon Hart was made chief whip, while Gillian Keegan was promoted to the Cabinet for the first time as education secretary and Grant Shapps was moved from his week-long stint heading up the Home Office (to replace the sacked Braverman) to the business department.
To make space for the new appointments, Sunak allowed himself a few ruthless sackings — although he did permit Cabinet ministers to technically resign to spare their blushes.
Ministers seen as close to Johnson, including Brandon Lewis and Kit Malthouse, were fired, as was Robert Buckland, who supported Sunak in the first leadership race only to shamelessly switch to Truss when it became clear she would win.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of Sunak’s most vocal critics and a cheerleader for Johnson, was also dispensed with, as well as top Truss lieutenants Ranil Jayawarenda and Simon Clarke. Rees-Mogg had once branded Sunak a “socialist” — although he hastily recanted that criticism Tuesday morning as the new PM picked his top team.
Having told the Tories at the weekend they must “Back Boris” or go “bust”, it was not enough to save him from his fate.
An earlier version of this story included an inaccurate previous ministerial brief.
LONDON — They were once close allies — two Tory Brexiteers working at the very top of government to steer Britain through the pandemic.
They then became the deadliest of enemies, when the apprentice knifed his master in the back and embarked on a fruitless campaign to pinch his job.
Now the poisonous rivalry between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak has reached its dramatic third act — an extraordinary struggle to take back control of the Conservative Party following the disaster of Liz Truss’ brief tenure.
“Rishi is the acceptable face of the Conservatives,” said one party insider who knows both men well, “whereas Boris has a monstrous appetite and a huge ego — he wouldn’t have got where he is without it.”
For Sunak, victory would mark an improbable comeback, just six weeks after he was roundly defeated in the last leadership contest.
Yet for Johnson, the comeback would be even more unlikely. No ousted prime minister has returned to No. 10 in nearly 40 years, since Labour’s Harold Wilson in 1974. Nobody since Bonar Law in the 1920s has led the Conservative Party twice.
The leadership contest has been truncated to last just a single week this time, and nominees must secure the backing of at least 100 Tory MPs by Monday afternoon to go forward to a final ballot of the party grassroots.
MPs have begun declaring their allegiances already, with Sunak currently in the lead and Johnson in second place. For both men, there is all to play for ahead of Monday’s 2 p.m. deadline.
The love I lost
A final head-to-head dual between Johnson and Sunak would be a gripping moment even by the standards of a modern-day Conservative Party which seems endlessly embroiled in psychodrama.
It was Johnson who gave Sunak his big break, promoting him first to a senior ministerial role in the Treasury and then, six months later, making him chancellor, the second-biggest job in government.
At first, the pair seemed to work well, with Johnson’s allies heaping praise on his young protege as the pair battled their way through the COVID pandemic which struck just a few weeks after Sunak was appointed chancellor in early 2020.
The PM and chancellor initially had a joint unit of advisers, but it gradually became dominated by Sunak’s people and the pair increasingly found themselves at loggerheads over tax-and-spend decisions. Sunak tacked to a more traditional Conservative view of fiscal responsibility and Johnson was comfortable with higher spending and borrowing.
“There had been mounting tension between the PM and Rishi for a while,” said one member of Johnson’s No. 10 team. “[Johnson] wanted a more adventurous, ambitious economic policy.”
By the time Sunak resigned, relations between the two men had deteriorated bitterly. Johnson’s team had long believed Sunak was plotting to oust their boss, and the same former aide claimed Sunak had not even phoned Johnson to warn him he was quitting.
During the summer leadership contest Sunak frequently distanced himself from his old boss, while allies of Johnson made clear they were prepared to stop Sunak’s march to No. 10 at any cost.
If they do end up as the final two contenders, nobody in the party will be able to say they are not getting a genuine choice.
Grassroots’ choice
Many of those who backed Sunak last time, largely from the moderate or centrist wing of the party, have immediately flocked back to his side. A few right-wingers, too — fed up of the Johnson circus — have joined them.
For his part, Johnson has garnered support mainly from loyalist former ministers, along with a cohort of ardent Brexiteers. But he has already demonstrated he still has the power to attract party big hitters, despite his checkered record in office.
Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, well-regarded for his handling of the Ukraine invasion, ruled himself out of the race Friday and said he was inclined to support Johnson as he “wins elections.” Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor seen as a quasi-spokesman for the post-industrial areas in northern England won by the Tories in 2019, also switched allegiance to Johnson Friday, having previously backed Sunak in his head-to-head with Truss.
Crucially, Johnson has another weapon in his armory, in the form of thousands of grassroots activists who believe he was wrongfully defenestrated in the summer and could yet rise again to save the party. If Johnson can make it onto the members’ ballot, he would fancy his chances against Sunak — or any of his other rivals — in a final head-to-head.
“It’s very similar to the Liz vibes of ‘we’re gonna win, it’s gonna be amazing’ and sunlit uplands,” said one Tory activist. “They all still think that absolutely nothing has happened since 2019, and Boris is still this hugely popular lovable buffoon that wins elections.”
Two rival Whatsapp groups have already sprung up for councillors and other local members: a ‘Back Boris’ group containing more than 500 people and a ‘Ready4Rishi’ group which is closer to 300.
Stumbling blocks
Sunak faces two major obstacles in his quest for Downing Street. The first — a major problem in his last campaign — is a perception of untrustworthiness among the grassroots, still angry that he turned on Johnson in July and triggered the sequence of events that led to the PM’s exit.
Second, Sunak is widely seen to have fought a lackluster campaign against Truss last time around — and the Conservative Party prides itself on picking winners. In the words of Tory focus group guru James Frayne, Sunak was “technocratic” where Truss was punchy and bold.
For his part, Johnson comes with enough baggage to fill the Downing Street flat several times over. Most pressingly, he is facing a parliamentary inquiry into whether he misled the House of Commons over the so-called Partygate scandal — a potentially serious offense which could see him temporarily suspended as an MP.
One MP elected in 2019 under Johnson’s banner said: “This inquiry would rip us apart if Boris was in No. 10.” An ex-aide to Johnson predicted that choosing him would prove to be “short-term gain for long-term pain,” as Johnson would provide a temporary bounce for the Tories “only to be then mired in months of crap” around the inquiry.
The Johnson myth
But there are good reasons, too, why these two former allies are the leading contenders for No. 10.
“[Johnson] does just make people feel good about themselves,” said a senior Conservative official who has known him since his time as mayor of London. “He has that quality.”
A former Sunak campaign member who has worked in frontline politics since the David Cameron era said he was “the hardest working politician I’ve ever seen in my life,” adding: “I don’t think anyone comes close to him in understanding the economy.”
Henry Hill, deputy editor of ConservativeHome, said the two men’s electoral appeal was radically different. Sunak would enable a “blue wall”-centered strategy at the next election — appealing to more affluent seats in the South — while “the best version of a Boris case is that it’s leaning into the realignment which accepts the Conservative Party’s future is more based on working-class constituencies in the North.”
Despite the persistent view among many Tories that Johnson is an election winner, however, pollsters warn the picture has shifted since his thumping 80-seat victory in 2019.
Keiran Pedley of IPSOS said Johnson’s net satisfaction rating with the general public on leaving office was worse than that of past PMs John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or David Cameron, while a recent poll found most people rated Sunak above Johnson when it came to doing a better job than Truss.
Perhaps more important than their personal ratings, Pedley added, the Tory Party “probably needs to consider that their problem is that people have lost confidence in them on the economy and are looking anew at Labour.”
None of the above
It is not beyond the realms of imagination that a third candidate surges through the middle and defeats the two biggest hitters in the race.
Brexiteer darlings Penny Mordaunt, Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman would all be hopeful of beating Sunak in a members’ ballot — although of these, Mordaunt is probably the only one likely to attract enough support from MPs to reach a final head-to-head.
Intriguingly, rumors abound — denied by both camps — of the possibility of a deal between the two men; one perhaps accepting a senior position in the other’s administration in return for their support.
“I reckon he wants a big job,” one former adviser to Johnson said. “Home secretary, or foreign secretary maybe.”
While Johnson was photographed flying back to the U.K. from his Caribbean holiday late Friday night, many expect he will only reenter the fray if he is confident he can win.
“Him losing a leadership contest is just ignominious — that’s not how the myth is meant to end,” said Hill. “In that circumstance, he’d probably be much happier always being able to think ‘oh, it could have been me.’”
This story was updated to include Boris Johnson’s return to the U.K.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to say that nobody since Bonar Law in the 1920s has led the Conservative Party twice.
LONDON — It is a British cliché that a week is a long time in politics. Liz Truss proved it true on Thursday when she became the shortest-serving British prime minister in history. In a matter of days, her U-turn on economic plans that made global markets jittery and the resignations of key ministers prompted calls from within Truss’ party for her to step down. But the shakeup at the top is hardly an outlier in the recent history of Britain’s Conservatives, whose latest troubles have been years in the making.
DAVID CAMERON’S DECISION
Some observers date the current leadership crisis to Conservative Party infighting over the role of the European Union during Cameron’s 2010-2016 tenure Britain’s leader. The pro-EU prime minister decided to resolve the debate by calling for a nationwide referendum on Britain’s membership in the bloc. With almost 52% voting to leave and 48% to remain, the 2016 referendum resulted in a divisive Brexit. It also led Cameron to resign.
MAY’S BREXIT MANDATE
Theresa May succeeded Cameron as Conservative leader and prime minister on a mandate to “deliver Brexit.” She remained in the job for three years and 11 days, by which time the U.K.’s departure from the Europe Union was still pending. The House of Commons three times rejected the withdrawal agreement May’s government negotiated with the EU. It was a tumultuous time mired in frustration in Brussels and discord in Westminster. Following a string of Brexit-related resignations from her government and under pressure from within her party, May ended up resigning.
BORIS JOHNSON’S TURN
In July 2019, Leave campaigner Boris Johnson became Britain’s third prime minister in just over three years. Johnson made Brexit finally happen in January 2020 after four years of international squabbling. The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic weeks later threw the U.K. off course again. Johnson’s was accused of moving too slowly to limit travel, create an effective test-and-trace program and to project vulnerable older people. Though Johnson won praise for a swift rollout of a nationwide vaccination program, the tight restrictions on businesses, public events and private gatherings the government ultimately imposed would lay the groundwork for the end of his tenure.
WHOSE PARTY IS THIS?
Photos and witness accounts emerged indicating Johnson and government officials broke their own COVID-19 rules on social gatherings during the pandemic. In April of this year, Johnson received a fixed penalty notice for attending one such gathering. He was the first sitting U.K. prime minister to be punished for breaking the law. The scandal, dubbed “partygate” by the British press, triggered a wave of disgust across Britain, especially among those who were not permitted to attend the funerals of loved ones who died during the pandemic. Though Johnson survived a no-confidence vote over that, revelations in July that he appointed a deputy chief whip accused of misconduct led to a wave of ministerial resignations. It cost Johnson his job. He announced his resignation on July 7.
TRUSS MAKES HISTORY
Johnson ally and former Foreign Secretary Liz Truss swept past former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak in September to become Britain’s third female prime minister – and the last leader to meet with Queen Elizabeth II. However, Truss is likely to be remembered for her brevity. After resigning Thursday, she holds the record as the shortest-serving leader in modern British history, clocking up a mere 44 days in office. Her demise was swift. The pound plummeted after the announcement of her mini-budget, which included billions in unfunded tax cuts. To stymie the damage, Truss made U-turns on major tax policies and replaced her Treasury chief. But the resignation Wednesday of Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who left with pointed criticism of her boss, unleashed a torrent of Tory calls for Truss to resign, too.
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AP journalist Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to this story.
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Follow AP’s coverage of British politics at https://apnews.com/hub/british-politics
Indian-origin British Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned on Wednesday after a “mistake” in using her private email for ministerial communication in London.
Braverman was only appointed Home Secretary 43 days ago when British Prime Minister Liz Truss took charge at 10 Downing Street. Her exit followed a face-to-face meeting with Truss earlier on Wednesday and posted her resignation letter on her Twitter handle.
“I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility; I resign,” the 42-year-old barrister said.
Braverman said she “sent an official document from my personal email to a trusted parliamentary colleague… as you know, the document was a draft Written Ministerial Statement about migration, due for publication imminently”.
“Nevertheless it is right for me to go. As soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels, and informed the Cabinet Secretary,” she said.
In remarks that will deal a further blow to her boss Liz Truss, she noted that “we are going through a tumultuous time… I have concerns about the direction of this government”.
“Not only have we broken key pledges that were promised to our voters, but I have had serious concerns about this government’s commitment to honouring manifesto commitments, such as reducing overall migration numbers and stopping illegal migration, particularly the dangerous small boats crossings.”
Braverman, the Conservative Party member of Parliament for Fareham in south-east England, served as the Attorney General in the Boris Johnson-led government. She was among the first contenders to throw her hat in the ring to replace Johnson as Tory leader and Prime Minister. She was named as the Home Secretary by Prime Minister Truss.
The mother of two children is the daughter of Hindu Tamil mother Uma and Goan-origin father Christie Fernandes. Her mother migrated to the UK from Mauritius while her father migrated from Kenya in the 1960s.
Braverman is a Buddhist who attends the London Buddhist Centre regularly and took her oath of office in Parliament on the Dhammapada’ scripture of Lord Buddha’s sayings.
Her resignation comes soon after the sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor last Friday and the axing of the majority of the government’s mini-budget on Monday by his successor, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
The move is expected to further shake up Truss’ embattled leadership.
Britain’s Scotch whisky industry was expected to be one of the biggest winners in the long-awaited Indo-UK free trade deal which now won’t be meeting the much-anticipated Diwali deadline.
It was former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who had set the Diwali deadline for the trade deal with India. However, new UK Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch recently said that her country was no longer working to that deadline. She further said that it makes sense to focus on the deal itself rather than the date.
While the date doesn’t matter for the new administration in the UK, it certainly does for the whisky industry there as it will miss out on another Diwali party here in India – the largest whisky market in the world.
Alcohol consumption during Diwali is very high in India and capturing this season would have made huge commercial sense for the Scotch whisky industry which accounts for 2 per cent of the total Indian whisky market (production of 2.4 billion bottles annually).
Indian whisky production is over two and a half times the total volume of total Scotch whisky production. In 2021, India was Scotch whisky’s 8th largest export market by value worth £146m (£102m in 2020), and second largest by volume, with the equivalent of 136m bottles exported (95m bottles in 2020).
For the UK, the deal would have secured jobs and increase the industry’s contribution to the economy by more than £300 million to nearly £6 billion. Unlocking tariffs into India could potentially boost revenue to the Indian government, both at the Centre and the states, by £3.4 billion annually.
Scotch Whisky Association CEO Mark Kent has called the ongoing negotiations a once-in-a-generation chance to give more Scottish distillers the opportunity to do business in India. He, however, said that the industry wants to see a deal agreed upon, but not any deal.
“We want to see a deal agreed, but not any deal. To deliver for the industry, any agreement must open up the market to more Scotch Whisky producers, which will in turn generate hundreds of new jobs across the UK, hundreds of millions of pounds of additional exports, and boost investment and revenue in India,” he said.
Kent also said that securing a deal with India to reduce the 150 per cent tariff on Scotch whisky was the industry’s top international trade priority.
Industry insiders from other sectors also want to tread with caution, especially after the reports of negotiations hitting a roadblock post UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s comments on Indians over-staying their visas.
The Ministry of External Affairs confirmed the deal is being worked upon so did the UK Trade Secretary.
Organisations working incessantly for a long time since the deal was announced in January 2022 now want to walk on the side of caution.
In Brexit Britain when the economy is on a downward spiral and the government in constant turmoil, the Indo-UK trade deal would come as a jewel in the crown.
Indian negotiators are in the driver’s seat for signing the India-UK free trade agreement (FTA), according to Lord Meghnad Desai, a well-known British economist who recently left the UK’s opposition Labour Party.
“We have to have bilateral trade with the UK because it foolishly walked out of the EU. It’s not India’s problem. It’s a UK problem. Basically, India is in the driving seat. India is going to be the UK’s solution. UK is not going to be India’s solution,” said Desai, who is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
“You have to look at the UK-India FTA that way. We have more or less equal total GDP size, but we have got highly skilled labour which they [UK] want, and a huge market,” the Padma Bhushan awardee told Business Today in an exclusive interview. The full interview will be out in BT’s next issue.
Desai’s remarks on the FTA comes in the midst of a growing controversy following the reservations on the question of immigration and open borders which were publicly expressed by the UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Just last week, Braverman, in an interview, expressed her fears that the FTA in its present form would lead to immigration of Indians to the UK, especially when the former already represented the largest group of visa overstayers in the UK.
Following Braverman’s remarks, several reports appeared in the foreign press which suggested that it had not gone down well with India, with many Indian ministers reportedly being ‘livid’ over Braverman’s remarks. The FTA negotiations, which was in many ways served as a keystone of former UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s foreign policy, was supposed to conclude by Diwali this year, with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi’s purported visit to London. Now, it seems, that visit and the deal is in considerable jeopardy.
In July, India and the UK had completed the fifth round of FTA negotiations.
The government, at that time, disclosed that “the technical experts from both sides came together for detailed draft treaty discussions in 85 separate sessions covering 15 policy areas,” In fact, the government had also said that “Indian and UK officials will continue to work intensively throughout the summer towards a target to conclude the majority of talks on a comprehensive and balanced FTA by the end of October 2022.”
“Indian skilled labour is very highly rated and India has enough of that. India can export and be all right. So, let us make sure that India gets the benefit to the maximum as a winning country, which can help the UK,” said Desai, while adding jokingly: “we can play cricket better than they can. They cannot export cricket.”
Currently, India’s exports to the UK have grown from 7 per cent a decade ago to a little over 10 per cent of the total exports in terms of value. In the same period, India’s imports increased from 5 per cent to 7 per cent.
The current FTA is targeted at doubling bilateral trade between India and the UK by 2030, with the government expressing hopes that the FTA with the UK would boost India’s exports of textiles, leather, jewellery, and more.
Desai, who holds a Masters’s Degree from the University of Mumbai and is a PHD holder from the University of Pennsylvania, also highlighted areas where the UK excels at.
“The UK is very good at research, especially university research and development. Places like Imperial or Cambridge have made the education departments like corporations. If you are a researcher, say in astrophysics or medicine, you are encouraged to form a corporation. And your research is your patent. And you’re going to make money, and the university doesn’t mind,” he said.
