Rishi Sunak is desperate to fashion himself as a break from the status quo. Since 2016 Britain has endured a chaotic exit from the European Union, five prime ministers, several Tory mutinies, ludicrous economic brinkmanship divined from the great mind of Liz Truss, the mendacity and delusion of Boris Johnson, and the sheer weariness of Theresa May. It makes sense that Sunak would want to distance himself. “It is time for a change,” he announced at the Conservative Party Conference in October.
After such a statement, we might think that appointing David Cameron as Foreign Secretary is an odd choice. It is not simply that he was prime minister no less than seven years ago. It is that the policies his government enacted have led Sunak to preside over the United Kingdom as it stands today: out of the European Union, contending with the legacy of austerity. This is not a break, it is a bridge.
Nevertheless, a narrow band of the electorate will be thrilled. Cameron’s mix of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism is not that widely held a position (Cameron, as a rule, did not perform particularly well in elections). But he holds himself well: he is good with the media, confident, self-assured, presidential. Plenty suggest that at such a crisis point – both in Ukraine and the Middle East – the quiet swagger of Cameron will be a perfect injection into Britain’s foreign policy.
Perhaps after all the years of infighting and dalliances with the political extremes, the ailing Conservative Party is in desperate need of a tonic
This mode of thinking, unfortunately, reveals a shallowness. After the madness of Truss and Johnson, the sneering populism personified by Suella Braverman and the hegemony of the swivel-eyed Brexiteers, something needed to change. In contrast to the unseriousness that gripped the party, Sunak and his chancellor Jeremy Hunt present themselves as the so-called grown-ups in the room. Cameron is celebrated as a member of the same category. But this is perhaps the most nauseating trope of contemporary British politics – relying on the notion that a good suit and good manners are perfectly good substitutes for good politics.
Because Cameron failed where it mattered. Of course, he is not responsible for the deep-rooted Euroscepticism in his country or in his own party. That was a far bigger beast than him: an instinct as British as Marks & Spencer or cricket. But he is not absolved of all responsibility. We shouldn’t forget that it was he who pulled the trigger, called the referendum, and enabled the hostile takeover of the Conservative Party by the ardent and delirious Brexiteers. His defenders say he had no choice: the party was ungovernable and divided, the question needed to be tested. His detractors respond that there was almost certainly another way.
But it was not just calling the referendum. Perhaps he did not have much of a choice. Cameron’s mistake was greater: vastly underestimating the extent of eurosceptic sentiment in Britain; erroneously believing it was an easily winnable referendum. And so the Remain campaign was a masterclass in how not to do it: devoid of emotion; reliant on stoking anxiety in the electorate; negative; wonk-ish. Unlike Vote Leave, Remain refused to accept that Brexit was far less an economic proposal than it was a spiritual one. That is a rather significant failure of politics. And on top of it all, when it didn’t go his way, Cameron jumped ship and handed the Gordian knot of Britain’s exit from the EU to Theresa May.
Ultimately, Sunak has inherited the consequences. The decision to appoint Cameron, then, seems all the stranger in that light. But perhaps, after all the years of infighting and dalliances with the political extremes, the ailing Conservative Party is in desperate need of a tonic.
In The Right To Rule, Ben Riley-Smith contends that the Conservative Party has relied on reinvention to retain power. There is not much in common, he suggests, between the pro-business sheen of Cameron’s government, the Brexit-ideologue party under Johnson and the staid and cautious May era. But the total absence of a consistent ideology is harming the movement. “Shape-shifting to sustain power is not without its downsides,” he concludes. Constant upheaval will eventually take its toll.
It was Cameron who pulled the trigger, called the referendum, and enabled the hostile takeover of the Conservative Party by the ardent and delirious Brexiteers
And so Sunak has found himself in a very odd place: wishing to cast himself as an agent of change, fully in the knowledge that a bit of steadiness is exactly what the country needs. Cameron steps into this narrowest of gaps. And perhaps it would work had Cameron not wrought many of the social and economic ills that Britain currently faces. Unfortunately, it is a rather frivolous appointment masquerading as something more serious.
I am reminded of the US political satire TV show Veep. “Continuity with change,” reads one presidential candidate’s incoherent slogan – a joke that speaks directly to the shallowness and empty rhetoric general to American politics. Perhaps it has its applications in Britain too.