Sunak learns from Truss mistakes in building new cabinet

The new prime minister has allies in key positions, as Sean O’Grady explains

Rishi Sunak waved goodbye to Jacob Rees-Mogg among others (Reuters)

Liz Truss’s abiding legacy may be to have provided some clarity for her successors about how not to run a government. Her cabinet, like her No 10 team, was notorious for being packed with cronies picked on the basis of loyalty rather than ability, and ended up as the most right-wing one since the end of the Second World War. Even Margaret Thatcher in her pomp managed to find some spaces for “wets” and for some of the bigger personalities who were loyal but didn’t always agree with her. By contrast, Truss displayed the same tendency to defy convention on personnel as she did in making policy, and these two destructive tendencies reinforced one another. Kwasi Kwarteng was the outstanding example and victim of the Truss administration’s tendency towards arrogance.

Rishi Sunak is not making the same errors. After the Johnson government collapsed and had to be replaced by a caretaker administration, in turn replaced by the short-lived Truss government, the number of serving and ex-cabinet ministers ballooned. Some will necessarily be disappointed but Sunak is being careful to create a cabinet that will be broadly supportive of his agenda while also including prominent personalities associated with Truss and Johnson. By age, experience, outlook, ideology and vestigial Leave/Remain loyalties it is a delicately constructed team – but it’s experience that counts this time round.

Thus Sunak chose to retain Therese Coffey, a senior Truss confidant, albeit in a different role. He also found positions for figures whose careers were sponsored very much by Johnson, such as carrying over James Cleverly in the foreign office. The same goes for Nadhim Zahawi as chairman of the party. Less of a Johnson buddy these days, Michael Gove, sacked by both Theresa May and Johnson in his time, will find plenty to keep him busy back at the department of Levelling Up (with less money).

Suella Braverman has even been reappointed to the Home Office – someone so volatile and extreme she couldn’t even survive the brief time Truss was premier without a couple of major rows and being asked to quit. Mr Sunak is taking a risk there, but it is clearly an attempt to appease the many in his party obsessed with migration. For those voters motivated by such “culture wars” issues, Sunak needs to defend his flank. He may live to regret that one if she scuppers the India free trade deal again for the sake of some student visas. Words may have been had.

Yet this is very much Sunak’s team, and his closest allies are in key positions across government. Jeremy Hunt, who enjoys a warm rapport with Sunak, stays in control of the Treasury. Another campaign lieutenant, Dominic Raab, is deputy prime minister and justice secretary again. Mel Stride, Simon Hart, Oliver Dowden and Grant Shapps will also form part of a solid phalanx of Sunak loyalists.

Penny Mordaunt seems the biggest casualty, and a puzzling one. Standing in for Truss in the Commons in recent times she acquitted herself well, and her showing in the summer leadership election and more recently ought to have brought her a bigger role in both the Truss and Sunak administrations. Her supporters, and others, must wonder what lies behind this strange neglect of one of the Conservatives’ better communicators.

On the whole, it looks to be a cabinet that won’t tumble into too many traps; but then again most of the mistakes and blunders made by the Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss administrations could be traced to the prime minister themself. The most important appointment of the day was the one made by the King. It’s all down to Sunak now.