With Suella Braverman’s remarks about protests taking place on Remembrance Day and her widely condemned comments on homelessness in the UK, prime minister Rishi Sunak sacked his home secretary in a reshuffle to save the presumed fate of his government.The prime minister surprised all by bringing back former prime minister David Cameron as his new foreign secretary, following James Cleverly’s move to the Home Office. But do the changes show just how bare the Conversative party’s options are with ministerial talent?John Rentoul answers your questions about the past week in Westminster.
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00:00 Hi, I'm John Rental.
00:01 After Rishi Sunak sacked Suella Braverman
00:04 and hired David Cameron,
00:06 the Independent asked you for your questions
00:08 about Rishi Sunak's cabinet reshuffle.
00:11 Let's see what you asked.
00:12 Zend19, usual spelling, said,
00:19 "When Sunak used his prerogative
00:22 "to appoint Cameron to the Lords,
00:24 "did he intend to annoy Nadine Dorris,
00:27 "or was that just a bonus?"
00:28 I suspect that's a rhetorical question.
00:31 It was interesting that Rishi Sunak
00:33 appointed David Cameron through the Lords.
00:36 It's been done before.
00:38 Peter Mandelson was brought into Gordon Brown's cabinet
00:41 via the House of Lords.
00:42 Nadine Dorris obviously created quite a lot of damage
00:46 by her sulk at not getting a peerage
00:50 on Boris Johnson's resignation honours list.
00:52 I think she was a bit hard done by
00:54 because I don't think anybody actually explained
00:56 until it was too late.
00:57 She couldn't get a deferred peerage,
01:00 that she had to resign as an MP
01:01 if she wanted to go to the House of Lords,
01:03 and I don't think that option was ever put to her.
01:05 So yeah, she's entitled to be a bit annoyed.
01:07 Swizzle asks, "John, in your opinion,
01:11 "why did so many Conservative MPs
01:13 "step down from ministerial positions?"
01:15 That is a very interesting question.
01:16 I thought one of the significant aspects of the reshuffle
01:19 was that a large number of mid-ranking ministers,
01:24 many of them really quite good in my opinion,
01:26 stood down from office,
01:28 thus weakening the government, I think.
01:31 People like Jesse Norman in the Transport Department,
01:34 Neil O'Brien, another very clever policy-driven minister
01:39 in the Health Department,
01:40 and Nick Gibb, who's one of the longest-serving
01:43 schools ministers and very responsible for
01:47 very important reforms,
01:49 bringing in phonics in primary schools.
01:52 Responsible for, I think,
01:54 a huge leap in teaching young children.
01:56 All those ministers stood down.
01:59 I think that's because they sense the end is coming,
02:02 the government's heading for defeat.
02:03 They met in the corridor, sort of metaphorically speaking,
02:06 other ministers coming in, such as David Cameron
02:09 and Andrea Leadsom, who think that, you know,
02:11 they might as well be ministers for a year,
02:14 even if it's only going to be a year.
02:17 But I think the net effect is to weaken the government.
02:19 Alex Black asks, "Do you think David Cameron
02:22 doing next-to-no politics for seven years
02:25 makes it harder to be foreign secretary
02:27 than, you know, say it was a newly elected government?"
02:30 I think that is an interesting question.
02:32 Actually, I, you know, whatever I think of David Cameron
02:36 and my opinion of him has gone down over the years.
02:39 One thing you could say about him
02:41 was that he's very, very quick.
02:43 He's a, you know, he absorbs a brief very quickly.
02:49 He worked incredibly hard as prime minister.
02:51 A lot of people didn't give him credit for that
02:53 because he had this reputation
02:55 for being the chillax prime minister,
02:57 which I thought was unfair.
02:59 He used to get up very early, work through his red boxes.
03:02 The contrast with Boris Johnson was very striking.
03:07 So, no, I think David Cameron will pick up very quickly
03:11 as foreign secretary and will work hard
03:15 at making all the international connections,
03:17 renewing all the international connections
03:19 he made as prime minister.
03:20 Paul Gillian asks,
03:22 "Given what's happening in Gaza and Ukraine
03:25 and an election in at most a year's time,
03:28 are there any wider implications
03:30 to David Cameron's appointment other than signalling?
03:33 It sounds like the Foreign Office to-do list
03:36 is already written."
03:37 I think that's underestimating the possibility
03:41 that unexpected things will happen over the next year.
03:43 I mean, the idea that David Cameron's just going to sort of
03:45 sit there and do what officials have already prepared for him,
03:49 I think is a little unlikely.
03:52 And, you know, the one thing you can say about David Cameron
03:55 is that he does have a lot of political experience.
03:59 And I think Rishi Sunak can trust him to just get on
04:02 with the business of being foreign secretary
04:06 and dealing with international crises,
04:07 freeing him, Rishi Sunak,
04:10 for the domestic agenda in an election year.
04:13 Councillor Ross Armour asks,
04:16 "Forget David Cameron.
04:17 What does it say about the rest of the parliamentary
04:20 Conservative Party that not one of their MPs
04:23 is deemed competent enough to be foreign secretary?"
04:26 I think that's a simplification.
04:28 I think Rishi Sunak wanted to bring in
04:31 a respected, reassuring figure.
04:35 I mean, obviously in the short term,
04:36 he wanted to distract from the antics of Isoela Braverman,
04:40 didn't want her departure to be the big story.
04:44 But I think in the longer term,
04:45 he wanted to strengthen the government
04:47 with someone who had a lot of experience.
04:51 I mean, one of the complaints that people have
04:54 about this government is that the turnover of ministers
04:57 has been so high that very few of them have built up
05:01 the experience and the competence necessary.
05:05 So bringing back someone such as David Cameron,
05:08 who has a lot of experience, a lot of contacts already,
05:12 understands politics at quite a deep level,
05:15 I think that there's a good argument for bringing him back.
05:18 I mean, obviously you don't want to bring too many
05:20 unelected lords into the cabinet,
05:23 but one or two appointments, I think, is a sound idea.
05:27 And our last question, Stephen asks,
05:29 "Why did Isoela Braverman stay in the government
05:32 if she disagreed fundamentally with its policies?
05:36 I'm afraid Braverman does not come out of this well."
05:39 I think that's a very fair point.
05:41 I mean, if you read Isoela Braverman's letter,
05:44 you think that her disagreements with Rishi Sunak
05:47 were so fundamental that she must have realised before now
05:52 that he wasn't doing what she expected him to do.
05:58 She would say that she was giving him a chance
06:01 to live up to the deal that they allegedly did
06:05 when she became Home Secretary.
06:08 But really, if she disagreed with him that deeply,
06:12 she should have resigned on principle
06:13 instead of waiting to be sacked.
06:14 And I think her letter portrays her as weak and petulant,
06:22 complaining about the mechanics of a deal,
06:26 a sort of a backroom deal,
06:29 instead of really standing up for her principles.
06:32 And I sort of agree with that question.
06:34 Thank you for watching You Ask the Questions.
06:37 You can find more episodes on Independent TV.
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