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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took voters by surprise on Monday, November 13, by sacking his Minister of Interior Suella Braverman and bringing back his party’s former leader David Cameron as foreign minister, replacing James Cleverly, who took over Braverman’s position.
Braverman’s sacking, as part of a government reshuffle, came after mounting pressure from the Labor and Conservative parties to take action against her rising hate rhetoric. In a recent article for the Times of London, she claimed that the police “plays favorites” when it comes to protestors, favoring pro-Palestinian and Black Lives Matter marches over right-wing demonstrations, and slammed Palestinian protests as “hate marches.”
Cameron, the new foreign secretary, is a conservative, deemed centrist by his party due to his past stances during his tenure as Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016. Experts and the media claim that his return to the political scene is Sunak’s attempt to include a more centrist view in his government, which is languishing 20 points behind in voters’ opinion polls.
Cameron’s unexpected comeback was not welcomed by the media and the public, who expressed opposition to his return.
David Cameron was head of the Conservative Party for five years before he was elected Prime Minister in 2010. At just 43, he was the youngest Prime Minister the UK had had in two decades.
During his first term, ending in 2015, Cameron formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. His aim was to ‘modernize’ the Conservative Party by portraying himself as the pro-environment and pro-gay marriage conservative Prime Minister who would shatter the UK’s dislike of conservative politics.
But voters’ main issues with him were his economic policies, which many consider to be the reason behind Britain’s ongoing economic decline.
His election as prime minister came just two years after the global financial crisis of 2008. To better allocate government funds amid the crunch, Cameron’s government made cuts to social welfare and reduced public spending on healthcare and education. The move is considered to have hurt the most disadvantaged in the country and the hardest-hit by the financial crisis.
As a result of his economic policies, the cost of living crisis in the UK kept worsening, and his party lost popularity.
Cameron’s Foreign Policy Past
In 2013, the conservatives opposed Cameron’s plans to intervene in Syria against President Bashar al-Assad. This major decision was his first foreign policy blow, as it is uncommon for UK parties to vote against their own leaders.
His second faux pas in the eyes of the Conservative Party was his decision to appease ties with China.
In 2015, Cameron proclaimed that he wanted the UK to become “China’s closest friend in the West,” calling for Chinese investment in British infrastructure. He was also spotted drinking a beer with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a local pub during the latter’s visit to Britain that same year.
Finally, his greatest international mistake was calling for the Brexit referendum in 2016, which many still blame him for. Despite the Conservative Party pushing for the UK to leave the EU, Cameron himself stood against that stance and even claimed that he would resign if the referendum’s result was in favor of ‘Leave.’
Brexit pushed Cameron to resign, as he promised. His foreign and economic policies made him an unpopular figure.
Many are wondering how Sunak and Cameron will unite fronts, given that Sunak has repeatedly stood as pro-Brexit and even publicly denounced Cameron’s foreign policies in the past, namely his ties to China.
