Rishi Sunak's Cameron gamble is an act of desperation

Sunak has dropped his 'candidate of change' pretence by picking David Cameron, his Conservative predecessor who called and lost the UK’s referendum on Europe, to be foreign secretary. After the sound and fury of the Tory party’s eruptions last week, a new vision emerges: Everything must change at the top so that everything can remain the same.

By Martin Ivens for Bloomberg Opinion

Rishi Sunak claimed to be the candidate of change at the Conservative Party’s annual conference a few weeks ago. But the man who aspired to tear up 30 years of “failed consensus” politics lacked conviction. A former school head prefect was always going to be an unlikely rebel.

Now Sunak has dropped the pretence by picking David Cameron, his Conservative predecessor who called and lost the UK’s referendum on Europe, to be foreign secretary. After the sound and fury of the Tory party’s eruptions last week, a new vision emerges: Everything must change at the top so that everything can remain the same.

Allies of Sunak — and Cameron — compare the latter’s comeback to Edward Heath’s choice of his predecessor, Alec Douglas Home as foreign secretary in 1970. They might also point out that Neville Chamberlain loyally served in World War II under Winston Churchill, his long-time party rival. But the ferocious Heath was never in awe of his mild-mannered colleague, and Chamberlain died six months into serving his new boss.

Cameron was prime minister from 2010 to 2016, leader of his party from 2005 and fought and won two elections. Sunak has scarcely been in the job for 12 months. There is no precedent in modern times for such an imbalance in seniority at the summit of power. Desperate times, however, call for desperate measures. The next general election is only a year away and Sunak has chosen to go down fighting with a team he can at least trust to not to undermine him. Cameron brings experience and unflappability. Too many of his colleagues lack that quintessential Westminster quality called “bottom” — in the sense of heft and hinterland rather than expansive behinds. In a similar fix, the Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown recalled his “frenemy” Peter Mandelson to office 15 years ago, stabilizing his shaky administration.

When he first won the keys to No. 10, Sunak tried balancing the warring factions within the Tory tribe around his Cabinet table. The party’s right wing was given leave to wage wars on wokeness and transgender rights, while he reassured the markets by returning to Cameron-era fiscal austerity and mending relations with the European Union. Experience was thin on the ground after Brexit, and four divisive leadership contests had taken their toll. Critics mocked that his inexperienced government was a Ministry Without All the Talents.

The voters quickly sensed it, too: the Tories trail by a consistent 20-point margin in the opinion polls. That deficit emboldened Sunak’s home secretary, Suella Braverman, to flout collective Cabinet responsibility last week, and has incited other potential leadership candidates to audition for his job. Put bluntly, Cameron has returned from exile to compensate for some of the PM’s own shortcomings.

Sunak has now placed proven ministerial talent in the Big Three Cabinet posts. The drawback is that Cameron, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt and the bluff new Home Secretary James Cleverly are all, like Sunak, male and privately educated. That’s one risk he has decided he can live with.

The prime minister has taken a second gamble. Political logic suggests he should balance his top team with a right-wing replacement at the Home Office. The obvious candidate, Trade and Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, has ambition aplenty but no track record. Sunak’s calculation is that this is no time for a novice. The alternative candidate, Michael Gove, while respected by Sunak, is not a natural soulmate.

Sunak’s third and biggest risk is the recall of a former leader whose record in foreign affairs is mixed at best. Cameron bet the house on the result of the Brexit referendum, and the manner of his defeat tarnished his reputation. His renegotiation of the UK’s terms of European membership was regarded as a failure, and his order that the civil service should make no plans to prepare for a leave vote was irresponsible.

Although Cameron has shown greater application to foreign affairs since his departure from No. 10 — his name has been floated in connection with NATO and UN jobs — in office he lacked a sure touch. Notably, he naively proclaimed “a golden era” of relations with China. He also abdicated responsibility for Ukraine to Germany and France after the first Russian invasion in 2014, although Britain had been a guarantor of the integrity of its borders. Out-of-office grubby lobbying activities on behalf of Greensill Capital, a supply-chain lender that exploded in March 2021 owing billions to creditors, mired him in scandal.

Yet Cameron’s connections in Washington and his understanding of Israel could be a bonus at this critical time in the Middle East. Always sympathetic to the Jewish people and a hardliner on Islamic terrorism, he can play the role of candid friend to Benjamin Netanyahu or his successor, having drawn attention to the unhappy lot of Palestinians in Gaza.

I’m sure that Cameron will also be loyal to his new boss. After all, he appointed William Hague, another former Conservative party leader, as his own foreign secretary; the two men consulted widely on domestic political strategy.

The real difficulty lies elsewhere: Cameron has enemies in the Parliamentary party. Brexiteers are naturally suspicious of him, and China hawks look askance at his record in promoting investment in a Beijing-backed Belt-and-Road initiative in Sri Lanka. But m any of these contradictions can be dealt with if the new Foreign Secretary shows emotional intelligence in his new role.

Fairly or unfairly, Cameron has a reputation for upper-class arrogance among backbench Tory MPs and in circles who’ve encountered him since leaving office. If he patronizes his middle-class brethren from his new perch in the House of Lords or from his gilded Foreign Office quarters, he will become a liability to his new boss. The lesson is that a return to the foreground of politics needs as much thought as getting there in the first place. The old adage holds: the personal is political — and vice versa.

As political skies darken all around him, however, Sunak has made his choice — a friend in need is a Foreign Secretary indeed.