British prime minister Rishi Sunak’s startling cabinet reshuffle, including the sacking of Suella Braverman and the return of David Cameron, may mark the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party’s lurch to the right in advance of the next election.
Sunak, a committed Brexiteer before it was fashionable in his party, has hardly been reborn as a centrist overnight – one of his big moves in recent months, for example, was to roll back on climate change measures.
Yet such policies have barely moved the dial on the 20 point lead Labour holds in most polls. Sunak appears to have calculated that there may be more electoral profit for the Conservative Party in shifting towards the centre ground, or at least in the perception of doing so.
There may also be an electoral downside. The prime minister has, somewhat implausibly, tried to present himself recently as an agent of change. Now, he appears more like an agent only of changing tack. Regular Tory attacks on Labour leader Keir Starmer for “flip flopping” can now be met with retorts of “hypocrisy”. Political pots calling kettles black rarely plays well with voters.
While the appointment of former prime minister Cameron as foreign secretary caught all the headlines, the sacking of the firebrand Braverman as home secretary was just as significant. In doing so, Sunak has dared the often-rebellious right wing of the party to challenge him.
His confidence in doing so may be buttressed by simple mathematics. Earlier this year, a right-wing rebellion was threatened over his Windsor Framework trade deal with the European Union. Yet in the end, only 22 Tory MPs voted against it. Meanwhile, Braverman could only muster 27 votes when she ran for leadership of the party last summer.
The weekend’s controversy over her hardline comments around Palestinian marches and the extent to which she appeared isolated, left her exposed. Braverman can surely cause Sunak trouble from the backbenches. But, he may have calculated, not enough to warrant keeping her onside.
So sacked her and at a stroke made his cabinet appear less hardline and right-wing.
The return of Cameron is another obvious hint that Sunak may tack more towards the centre ground in the general election next year. Cameron was a Remainer and a moderniser, even if his political miscalculations over Brexit bitterly divided Britain.
Yet he was also a master at winning over moderate centre-right voters. Cameron came to power in 2010 in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. But he retained power in 2015 by turning on his coalition partner and ruthlessly targeting Lib Dem seats in well-to-do, moderate areas of southeast England, the so-called Tory “Blue Wall”.
By bringing Cameron back in, Sunak will make his party more palatable to Blue Wall voters, many of whom were unnerved by the likes of Braverman and planned to jump ship back to the Lib Dems.
However, it also looks like an admission of defeat in Tory attempts to hold on to seats in the working-class “Red Wall” seats of northern England, where the views of hardliners such as Braverman held sway.
Sunak knows he cannot hold on to power without the Red Wall. Maybe he is just trying to limit the damage.