Britain’s beleaguered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak carried out a dramatic reshuffle to his Cabinet on Monday, firing his divisive home secretary and bringing back former premier David Cameron to the heart of government after a seven-year absence from politics.
The hardline Home Secretary Suella Braverman was sacked early on Monday morning, after making inflammatory comments about the policing of pro-Palestinian protests in central London over the weekend. Her tenure had wrought with scandals and divisive remarks, which had long caused fractures in Sunak’s government.
Sunak then announced he was bringing Cameron back to frontline politics as Foreign Secretary, in a stunning move that has few parallels in recent British political history.
Cameron served as prime minister from 2010 to 2016, resigning after Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum that he had called.
His premiership set the course of 13 years of Conservative rule, but the self-inflicted chaos of the Brexit referendum and its aftermath threw his party into years of instability from which it is still struggling to emerge.
Downing Street confirmed that James Cleverly, formerly the foreign secretary, will take over from Braverman, a shift that made space for Cameron’s remarkable return to Cabinet.
