In one desperate last throw of the dice like a gambler on a losing streak, Rishi Sunak, UK’s Tory Prime Minister, made startling Cabinet changes even as the Opposition Labour has been stealing a 20-point lead in popularity polls after 13 years of Conservative rule.
Having promised ‘change’ at a recent party conclave, Mr Sunak, in a bid to placate the centrists, brought back predecessor David Cameron who was responsible for the Brexit referendum that had divided the ruling party and who had preached austerity in public services while nurturing trade links to China that are now frowned upon in a changed geopolitical landscape.
The UK PM may have had little choice in sacking his rebellious home secretary Suella Braverman, who had been braver than many men in calling out certain cross-cultural undercurrents felt in the cultural melting pot that is the urban UK.
It might sound incongruous that a child of Indian origin migrants from Kenya and Mauritius should oppose migration into the UK — of the illegal variety in attempting to cross the seas on small boats — with the intensity of a Sunday preacher raging against the vices.
What Suella is saying may have found resonance among the conservative people of what was once the centre of an empire on which the sun never set. But she took on the Metropolitan Police for allowing popular pro-Palestine protests to clash with traditional Armistice Day solemnity and did so in an unauthorised Op-Ed as well while sustaining her polarising rhetoric about sending asylum seekers to Rwanda and denigrating homelessness as a “lifestyle choice”.
The UK, caught in a maelstrom amid economics of high inflation, divisions over partying during Covid management time that saw the poll-winning Prime Minister Boris Johson ousted, shifting opinions on the Israel-Hamas fracas with racially explosive anti-Semitism creeping in, divisiveness over Tory allegiance to tax cuts and a ruling party feuding over every little thing while frequently changing Prime Ministers midstream, is being wracked by winds of change against the Tories.
Mr Sunak, UK’s first Hindu Prime Minister and the fourth since Mr Cameron walked into the Brexit referendum trap and stepped down in 2016, had to do something about it lest the Tories suffer the fate of Labour after a similar long rule in 2010. A decent and diligent try at setting the economy right and dumping some green measures while supporting private transportation and cancelling an expensive high speed rail link, did not appear to bring about the desired effect.
Against such a backdrop, dumping Suella Braverman and creating a comeback for Mr Cameron via the House of Lords route with a minister to represent him in the Commons were twin moves that could do the most to tilt the Tory applecart even more.
All the refurbishing moves in the Cabinet reshuffle, which saw visiting Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar scrambling to get ready for a face-to-face meeting with a completely different personality in the ‘Remainer’ Cameron in a post-Brexit government, somehow appear poised to have quite the opposite effect on the British electorate that may seal the Tories’ fate in 2024. But no one can say Mr Sunak did not try to keep the Tories afloat amid all the contradictions.
