David Cameron is back: brilliant move or miscast of the year

Opinion

So Monday was the big day when Suella Braverman had to vacate her desk at the Interior Ministry. Not Wednesday, as many political observers had speculated. Wednesday is the day on which the British will find out whether Sunak’s government will be allowed to deport refugees to Rwanda.

When immigrant daughter Braverman was asked a year ago about her greatest wish, she said she dreamed of “seeing a plane full of migrants take off towards Kigali.” The European Court of Human Rights temporarily put a stop to Braverman’s perverse fantasy last year, declaring it illegal and declaring the African country a “third country that is not safe for refugees.” The British government objected, and the Supreme Court will have the final word on the matter on Wednesday.

Braverman was the darling of the Tories’ far-right wing

The Rwanda dream was not the only atrocity Braverman committed during her time in office. The darling of the Tories’ far-right wing clearly relished the role of provocateur, repeatedly making headlines, most recently with the remark that homelessness was a “consciously chosen lifestyle.” Her track record as Interior Minister, on the other hand, is poor. Under her, as under her predecessor Priti Patel, the number of unprocessed asylum applications rose to 175,000 – a remarkable number, considering that only around 75,000 applicants even made it to the island this year. , employees anonymously told the minister that Prime Minister Sunak was better prepared and briefed than the home secretary in meetings with staff in this important ministry.

Cameron is only popular with 24 percent of Brits

Rishi Sunak’s decision to replace the ambitious woman with a penchant for the grotesque with the comparatively sober former Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is as obvious as his appointment of Braverman as Home Secretary a year ago. At that time, the appointed, not formally elected technocrat Sunak, whose pro-Brexit stance nobody really believed, needed the uninhibited Braverman to pacify the wing of the Brexit fanatics. Even if some hardcore representatives of this faction still do not want to admit it today, the dream of Brexit has now finally given way to the reality of an economically isolated Great Britain that is trying to take small, diplomatic steps to get closer to the EU and other important economic partners. The dismissal of Braverman is another signal in this direction: Sunak wants to say that we are once again a country that can be talked to sensibly.

With the rehabilitation of David Cameron, the circle has now come full circle. At least that would be the benign interpretation of Sunak’s surprising decision to bring the former prime minister into his cabinet as the new foreign minister. All forgiven: Cameron’s careless decision to call a referendum on Britain’s exit from the EU in 2016 in order to appease the uninhibited far-right wing of his party, to which Braverman belongs. His momentous nonchalance in the face of the Brexit wing’s gigantic manipulation campaign, which overran the country without encountering any resistance from the pro-EU camp. His resignation the day after the referendum, humming a little song.

Alone: ​​British voters have good memories. Only 24 percent of Brits have a positive opinion of David Cameron, the polling institute Savanta recently found. Only Theresa May and Liz Truss are below these figures, at 22 and 12 percent respectively. For many, Cameron, and not Boris Johnson, remains the real architect of Brexit. The fact that this happened out of pure negligence is particularly serious for the EU supporters among them.

Sunak is running out of talent

Another, less forgiving explanation for Sunak’s choice of David Cameron would be that the prime minister is simply running out of talent within his own ranks. He has been moving those Tories who are still on his side in the deeply divided party – and there are not many of them – from post to post for some time. The current Defense Secretary Grant Shapps serves as an example of this. The political lightweight has held no fewer than three ministerial positions in the last 14 months and has so far not appeared particularly competent in any of them. Good candidates, like former Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, have either resigned or are plotting against Sunak. This is also why we look towards David Cameron.

The constitutional question remains as to how an unelected politician can hold such an important cabinet position. Finally, in 2016, Cameron gave up his mandate as a member of parliament when he became prime minister. To solve this problem, Sunak was able to resort to his predecessor Boris Johnson’s bag of tricks: In order to make the unelected David Frost his minister for Brexit matters, the self-proclaimed champion of the will of the people quickly had Frost appointed Lord in the British House of Lords in 2020. Sunak did the same.

Meanwhile, Suella Bravermann, the Cruella de Vil of the Conservative Party, is not yet giving up. We would hear from her, she announced.