Can the return of Lord Cameron of Remainville win back lost Tory voters?

The PM has seized headlines with his surprise appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary – but does a lurch to the centre have any hope of securing the Conservatives a fifth term, wonders John Rentoul

Lord Cameron arrives in Downing Street – accompanied by international development secretary Andrew Mitchell – for his first Cabinet meeting as foreign secretary (PA)

The comparison from history is with the return of Peter Mandelson to the Labour cabinet in 2008. That was a publicity coup by Gordon Brown, reaching out to the Blairites to unite the party and bringing in one of the most talented ministers of the New Labour era.

Mandelson – who, like David Cameron, re-entered the cabinet via the House of Lords – strengthened Brown’s government and helped Labour fight back from the depths of opinion-poll gloom.

Lord Cameron’s return is less likely to be successful. It succeeded in diverting attention from the “look-at-me” former home secretary. But the only question that matters over the next year or so is whether it helps win back some of the votes that the Conservative Party has lost.

It feels like a lurch to the centre, which is always the right instinct in politics, but it also feels like a lurch to the past, which is usually a mistake. It feels, above all, like the restoration of the Remainers – which might make some sense in defending a lot of formerly safe Tory seats in the south of England, but seems to be writing off those Labour Leave seats that Boris Johnson won last time.

Cameron, as both a centrist Tory and a Remainer, symbolises the incoherence of Sunak’s reshuffled government. He may have led the Remain campaign, but the more sectarian Remainers don’t like him because they blame him for allowing the referendum in the first place. There is a danger, as with any politician who arrives with baggage, of offending both sides.

It seems odd to put relations with the European Union in the hands of the person who fought and lost the referendum. If voters want closer relations with the EU, it would make more sense for them to vote Labour. And if other voters wanted to leave the EU but think that Brexit has been handled badly, Cameron would hardly be their choice as the person to put right the mistakes.

Sunak’s calculation may be that a former prime minister brings the aura of experience and competence, but this particular one also carries the weight of his past lobbying on behalf of Greensill. Expect Labour to make hay with “Tory sleaze”. It is not as if James Cleverly was doing such a bad job of foreign secretary that there was an urgent need to import someone with relevant experience of global handshaking.

Indeed, Cleverly was doing such a good job that he was the best choice to replace Suella Braverman at the Home Office. He has only himself to blame for being prised out of the job he loved so much.

The overall message of the reshuffle is that Sunak’s government lacks a clear sense of direction. It looks as if the prime minister has repudiated Braverman’s politics. Her long-expected sacking was apparently sealed by the phrase “lifestyle choice”, applied to rough sleepers. Sunak offered Cameron the job last Tuesday, before the publication of Braverman’s provocative and unauthorised article in The Times on Thursday.

But then Sunak seemed to worry that he had overdone the centrist tilt, late in the day bringing back Esther McVey into government, attending cabinet, with a Bravermanesque brief to promote “common sense”. He seems to be trying to make the point that it was not Braverman’s politics that were the problem, but her judgement and her deficiencies as a team player.

Braverman is often described as a right-wing populist, which is a way of saying “someone who holds views that are popular but that really ought not to be”. But in fact she is an unpopulist: unpopular with the voters, and with most of her fellow MPs, and less popular with Tory party members than Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt and Johnny Mercer, according to last month’s Conservative Home survey.

The Cameron appointment is clearly a lurch towards the Remainer-tinged centre ground, but Sunak himself remains frustratingly hard to define. One moment he proclaims himself the candidate of change; the next, he brings back the prime minister of the pre-Brexit era.

One moment he seems to tilt against green windmills, claiming to be “pragmatic and proportionate” about net zero; the next, he is making a pitch for the middle-class Greenpeace vote who might see Cameron the husky-hugger as one of them. Of course, Cameron was something of an eco-pragmatist once he got into office, wanting to get rid of the “green crap” from energy bills. But Sunak’s pitch is tonally inconsistent and needs a lot of explaining, teaching and persuading. Whatever his strengths, he is not a great teacher-politician.

This was a reshuffle aimed at trying to limit the Tories’ losses at the election, but I don’t think it will be as successful as the return of Lord Mandelson. His appointment as business secretary and then first secretary of state helped to deny the Conservatives a majority in the 2010 election.

Bringing back Lord Cameron seems unlikely to help Sunak fight back and deliver a hung parliament in a year’s time.