Who would be in Liz Truss’s cabinet?

Who would be her chancellor? What would Rishi Sunak do? What about the deputy prime minister? John Rentoul speculates

The guessing game is irresistible, so let us get to work (Getty)

Predictions of cabinet reshuffles are totally pointless and usually wrong. Actually, they may not be pointless: 62 per cent of Conservative Party members told YouGov the other day that “suggestions of which other MPs would be appointed to senior cabinet roles by each leader” were “important” in deciding which candidate to support. (Which is odd, as both candidates refuse to discuss possible jobs.)

But they are usually wrong. I remember one of the milestones on Alastair Campbell’s road to a rocky relationship with journalists was when he handed out CDs by a band called Garbage to members of the parliamentary lobby for their duff predictions for one of Tony Blair’s reshuffles.

Still, the guessing game is also irresistible, so let us get to work. First stop: who would be Truss’s chancellor? Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, is the favourite in the betting, but I am not so sure. This is the most important relationship in any government: Kwarteng has a mind of his own and a willingness to take risks that could make it difficult from the start. The safer option would be Simon Clarke, the chief secretary already at the Treasury. Or if Truss wanted to make history by appointing the first female chancellor (a label she once wanted herself), she could appoint Therese Coffey, another of her early and vocal supporters.

The second question, given that she won’t be reappointing Rishi Sunak to his old job, is what she offers him and whether he will take it. The Foreign Office would be a big gesture of reconciliation. The Home Office, another great office of state, would be more of a challenge, to see if Sunak could deliver on redefining refugee status and making the Rwanda policy work. Or he could be offered health and social care, given that he has made a big deal of Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid failing to get a “grip” on the backlog problem.

Any of those would work if Truss wants him in her cabinet, which she should do if she is serious about uniting the party, and if Sunak wants to be in the cabinet, which is more doubtful. He may think he will have another chance of the leadership if the party loses the next election, in which case a loyal stint in cabinet would be a better platform, but the hostility to him for supposedly ousting Johnson is only going to grow, and I suspect that Jeremy Hunt is right that candidates get “only one go” in today’s politics.

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Then there is Dominic Raab, a Sunak supporter, and the office of deputy prime minister. It would look vindictive to demote him, yet DPM is a useful bauble to offer to one of her own supporters.

This is all assuming that Truss is going to win, of course, but I wonder if it is too early to start one of my guess-the-top-jobs online sweepstakes.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator