Transcript: Rebellions, reshuffles and Cameron’s return

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Rebellions, reshuffles and Cameron’s return’

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William Wallis
There is no evidence as yet that removing asylum seekers to Rwanda would actually have the desired effect of halting the traffic of small boats into the UK altogether.

Lucy Fisher
Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times. I’m Lucy Fisher. The FT’s William Wallis there, talking about the Supreme Court ruling that the government’s Rwanda plan is unlawful. We’ll come back to William a bit later. Also coming up, a pretty seismic week in politics. A home secretary sacked, a flagship government policy seemingly in tatters and a major Labour rebellion. And to discuss all that, I’m joined by my FT colleague Stephen Bush. Hello, Stephen.

Stephen Bush
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And George Parker. Hi, George.

George Parker
Hello, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
So a week full of twists and turns got off to a pretty surprising start. The return of former Prime Minister David Cameron to cabinet, despite not currently having a seat in the House of Commons. Here’s how David, now Lord Cameron, described what he will bring to Rishi Sunak’s government.

Lord David Cameron in audio clip
I can help the prime minister to make sure we build our alliances, we build partnerships with our friends, we deter our enemies and we keep our country strong. That’s why I’m doing the job and I’m delighted to accept.

Lucy Fisher
George, you’re a veteran parliament watcher. How unusual is this move?

George Parker
Well, it’s extremely unusual to have a prime minister returning to the cabinet in this way. I think you have to go back to Alec Douglas-Home. He was not the last prime minister who came back as a . . . 

Stephen Bush
In Heath’s cabinet.

George Parker
As, yes, back in the early 1970s, so it’s a once in a two-generation event, in so many respects. And you could see the look of astonishment from the journalists lined up in Downing Street as the car came down Downing Street and David Cameron came out. So it’s extremely unusual. I think if anybody needed a second act in their political career, it is David Cameron. The events leading up to his defenestration as prime minister in 2016, notably the Brexit referendum and the events subsequently — the lobbying scandals, the involvement in a UK-China investment fund, all of those things have basically tarnished his reputation as a prime minister and you could tell he’s itching to get back on the front line and do some remedial work.

Lucy Fisher
But as you point out, sir, he comes with a lot of baggage, doesn’t he? Is this a bit of a risk, do you think, Stephen, for Rishi Sunak to bring him in?

Stephen Bush
So one thing I realised this week, as I am clearly actually the number one David Cameron apologist left in British political journalism because one, I don’t think it is a risk because they are already polling at about a quarter of the vote, right? At this point, they need to do something to try and change their trajectory because their trajectory is not just defeat, but, you know, potentially the end. But also, yes, his premiership ended poorly, to put it mildly. Yes, we are still living with many of the consequences of the decisions taken from 2010-16. Yes, his post-premiership career has a number of blights on it, many of which have been very well reported by the FT, but . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Is this the apology bit?

Stephen Bush
This is the apology. But, one, we shouldn’t forget that politically and electorally speaking, he is the most successful Conservative leader since the fall of the Berlin Wall. You don’t have to knock on very many doors in the stockbroker belt, in the areas the Lib Dems are now menacing the Conservatives, to hear people who were once reliably Conservative voters. You say something like, yeah, we need a change, don’t we? I suppose I’ll vote for Keir Starmer. God, what wouldn’t I give for David Cameron to come back? And when you consider the problems Rishi Sunak has and he can’t fix, right? He can’t invent time travel and not have had Liz Truss become prime minister. He can’t make the problems in the public services be fixed by the time of the next election.

There is no painless way through the United Kingdom’s economic difficulties, but the one thing he could do was bring back a person who is still more popular than the Conservative party, is more popular than Rishi Sunak now is, and hope that at the least gets that type of voter who used to be a reliable part of the Conservative coalition to go, actually, John, maybe I won’t vote Lib Dem next year. Maybe I won’t reluctantly vote for Keir Starmer. Maybe I will come home to the Conservative party. I’m not saying that it will work, but I think on paper it makes a lot of sense. Rishi Sunak could use someone who displays basic political instincts at the top of his team, as I would say. The weird fact, when he came back, you know, then he’s brought back Cameron a little bit over a month after saying, I don’t like the last 30 years.

Lucy Fisher
That’s it, isn’t it? It is a massive gear change, George, isn’t it, from saying that he’s part of the failed consensus? Labour leapt on that immediately as soon as David Cameron’s appointment was confirmed, when people were still incredulous after seeing him walk up Downing Street. So there is that sort of awkwardness for Sunak that he seems to be ditching that narrative, but also potentially ditching his commitment to the red wall because that’s another sort of fallout we’ve seen from his appointment, isn’t it? People think this is the return of the centrists. This is the sort of the march of the One Nation Conservatives, this reshuffle. And he’s upset quite a lot of his backbenchers that he now faces pretty vicious attack from.

George Parker
Look, if Rishi Sunak has a political strategy it’s pretty hard to spot it, I would say, unless it’s simply throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some of it’s gonna stick. I mean, you’re right. I mean, how can you make the centrepiece of your party conference speech a denunciation of 30 years of failed politics and the status quo, and then reappoint someone who was your predecessor, you know, a few years back and was prime minister for six of those 30 years? It is literally incredible, if you present yourself as the change leader, as Rishi Sunak is doing, then how can you bring back David Cameron?

And you saw this week the sort of, the wild veering in the last 10 days between the policies which you might loosely say are designed to appeal to the rebel. And then the appointment of David Cameron, which as Stephen was saying is designed presumably to help shore up the blue wall. In the run-up to David Cameron’s appointment, you had Rishi Sunak leaning in, frankly, to the Suella Braverman narrative about the protests and, you know, calling the head of the police in to complain about it. And then within 48 hours of David Cameron’s appointment and all of us writing about the shift back to the centre, Rishi Sunak was in Downing Street talking about in the context of the Rwanda ruling, the possibility of leaving or hinting at leaving the European Convention of Human Rights. I mean, the policy and the strategy seems to be at the moment all over the place.

Lucy Fisher
And the reshuffle’s been, you know, well chewed over now. Stephen, just a word from you on what else stuck out. What are you still thinking about from what happened on Monday?

Stephen Bush
To follow up on what George said, the thing which just stuck out for me is the return of that very old trick among Conservative politicians, which is when they realise late on then reshuffle, aiming to get something to help the right step forward. A nebulous role for Esther McVey attending cabinet, a role she held with distinction under both Theresa May and David Cameron. And I thought actually, Esther McVey being brought back into government in that capacity spoke again to that lack of coherence, right, and . . . 

George Parker
This is being a minister of common sense.

Stephen Bush
Yeah, a minister of . . . And it was a real kind of like, exactly as George said that if there is a strategy in Downing Street, it is not remotely clear what it is, what its through line is. And I think that this was the reshuffle which brought back both David Cameron and Esther McVey, I think is the thing which kind of summarises where the Rishi Sunak project is right now.

Lucy Fisher
Even the timing of it, George. It happened quite late in the day after there’d been a lot of noises off from some of the right of the party saying, you know, this is a rout, this is a purge of our folks. I slightly wondered whether it had been a move that was on the whiteboard at the beginning of the day, hastily cobbled together to assuage that narrative. Can I just ask you briefly about Suella Braverman? What do you make of her departure, sacking, this week and her very vicious letter attacking Rishi Sunak after her exit?

George Parker
Well, I’d say that Suella Braverman played a useful purpose for Rishi Sunak. First of all, helping him to get elected as Tory leader back in October 2020 and just coming onside and then saying the kind of things that Rishi Sunak’s himself didn’t really want to say but felt needed to be said to appeal to certain segments of the electorate. But it was becoming increasingly obvious that she was going well off the reservation. She was saying things that no minister, let alone Rishi Sunak, could ever support in public. She appeared to be pursuing her crusade for the Tory leadership from the front bench and in the end it was inevitable she had to go.

I think the manner of her departure made it even less likely, frankly, that she will ever succeed in her ambition of replacing Rishi Sunak, because frankly, it was well over the top. The language was excessive. Someone close to Rishi Sunak said that the resignation was less Geoffrey Howe and more Nadine Dorries, which I thought summed it up. And you could tell how few people actually, Tory MPs were prepared to go out and support Suella Braverman or turn up at the New Conservatives, her caucus in the party. Maybe a dozen people turned up on the night she was sacked. So, you know, people in Downing Street are quite relieved about that. There’s no army behind Suella Braverman. I think she might sort of disappear into the background relatively quickly. It felt like she’d said too much in that parting letter, frankly.

Lucy Fisher
I think you’re right. And Stephen, George mentions this caucus, the New Conservatives, who’ve announced this week that they are going to now be organising within the party. They’re going to be fundraising, recruiting supporters to back their MPs, their candidates at the next election. Don’t call us Tory Momentum, I’m told by insiders, but it does feel a bit like that, doesn’t it? Just how much are they backing Suella? Because it feels to me slightly she needs them more than they need her.

Stephen Bush
I think, to be honest, a lot of people don’t really know who they’re going to back. You’re exactly right. A lot of ambitious politicians on the right can see that there is going to be in the next leadership election a slot for someone who essentially says we lost because we didn’t shout hard enough. We lost because we were too leftwing. So Suella Braverman’s problem, exactly as George says, is that that letter, essentially all of the things that allies of Priti Patel, the other person who’s fishing in that pool at the moment, all the things that Priti Patel has said both privately and publicly about, yeah, OK, look you might agree with what Suella says, but have you noticed that she never actually does anything?

That was a letter in which, in addition to its intemperate language, basically said, Prime Minister, you made full promises to me. It would be obvious to a kitten who’s just had a major cardiovascular incident that these pledges weren’t gonna be made, and yet I was planning to stick around until you fired me. I think there is going to be an attempt to both recruit in the country and to move the party to the right in opposition. But I think that the questions over Suella Braverman’s competence and everything she failed to do repelled authoritarian voters. And that’s, this is kind of the problem, is that although there is a sort of market demand for a politician a bit like Suella Braverman, there is a market demand crucially for a politician who is good and like Suella Braverman in the Conservative party. I don’t think that there’s ever going to be a caucus to get someone to the final round of the Conservative leadership election whose record is failure, to put it bluntly.

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Lucy Fisher
Well, that brings us on neatly to the next topic, which is, of course, the government setback with its efforts to deal with irregular migration, which was of course, one of Suella Braverman’s key charges against Rishi Sunak — that he had betrayed his pledge to the nation to do whatever it takes to stop the small boats. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the plan to remove asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. Sunak quickly moved in with a plan B, but will it work? The FT’s William Wallis has been following the case. Hello, William.

William Wallis
Hello, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
So take us through this again briefly. What exactly has the Supreme Court ruled?

William Wallis
Essentially, the ruling hinged on the Supreme Court’s decision that Rwanda was not a safe place to send asylum seekers because it couldn’t be trusted not to forcibly repatriate them to their countries of origin where they might be persecuted. And that would be in violation of international law. They drew on other evidence in their ruling, including that they’d been shown evidence that Rwanda could not be trusted to respect its commitments to international law and international treaties.

Lucy Fisher
And Rishi Sunak now says he’s got a plan B, a new treaty with Rwanda. How will that work exactly?

William Wallis
Well, the Supreme Court ruling also gave a tiny bit of wiggle room to the government by saying that should things change, the Rwanda policy could be lawful in the future. Rishi Sunak has taken this and he’s now said he will do two things. One, he will and is in the process of renegotiating a treaty with the Rwandans that will be legally binding. The original agreement was just a memorandum of understanding which wasn’t legally binding. In this, it would appear that the government is going to try and address some of the issues that the Supreme Court brought up, notably by committing Rwanda legally not to forcibly repatriate asylum seekers to their countries of origin. That’s the first plank of what he’s trying to do. He’s also saying he will introduce emergency legislation which will essentially deem, if it passes parliament, that Rwanda is safe, contrary to what the Supreme Court has ruled.

Lucy Fisher
And so we’ve had Lord Sumption, a former Supreme Court justice, call this plan constitutionally extraordinary. He says that what Sunak’s essentially trying to do is legislate to change the facts, simply change the law to say that Rwanda is a safe third country. What do you make of his criticism of this?

William Wallis
Well, I think that’s where a lot of people from the legal profession are sitting today. And it has created some degree of shock because, like you say, essentially it looks like the government is trying to legislate to say something is black when the highest court in the country has actually said it’s white. So that is bound to be very legally contentious. And it also raises the question of whether this policy can be put into operation without a whole new flurry of legal challenges.

Lucy Fisher
And remind us how Rwanda’s responded to all this.

William Wallis
Rwanda has responded, as it has along the way in some of these court hearings, to say that ultimately, the decision of the British courts whether they allow this policy to go ahead, but that it believes that it’s wrong and it’s hypocritical and in fact, it is a safe place. And they have been quite angered by the evidence that was brought by the UN’s refugee agency which informed the court’s ruling.

Lucy Fisher
Well, William, stay with us. I want to bring George and Stephen in. George, let’s look at the politics of this. The Tory right aren’t buying Sunak’s plan B, are they? They’re saying he’s gonna need to forge ahead with replacing the European Convention on Human Rights, the way that that is implemented on the UK statute book as the Human Rights Act with the British Bill of Rights.

George Parker
Yes, I mean, whatever Rishi Sunak says on the European Convention of Human Rights is never gonna be enough to satisfy some on the right who would like Britain to basically pull out of the Convention on Human Rights. And Rishi Sunak finds himself again in a precarious position, caught between the right who take this very absolutist view that you shouldn’t have a foreign court interfering in our domestic law and people on the left of the party representing many of the blue wall seats who think it’s absolutely outrageous, the idea that we could find ourselves disregarding parts of ECHR or pulling out of the ECHR completely, impugning ourselves in the company of Russia and Belarus.

And so as a consequence, you had what I think was a fairly effective bit of media management by Rishi Sunak, who’d come out with this emergency legislation which actually got quite favourable headlines in most of the papers, actually, the day after this announcement. But as William was just describing, that when you look at it, really what he’s done is he’s kicking this into the long grass. This could be extended legal challenges. Nobody’s gonna go on a plane to Rwanda. No asylum seeker is gonna be put on a plane to Iran before the next general election. And this issue will be hanging over the Tory party as an unresolved question, the future of Britain in ECHR, right through to polling day.

Lucy Fisher
And just pick up on that key point that George has made. William, and then you, Stephen: do you agree with that? Do you think that we will see flights to Rwanda happening before the next election? Sunak said he wants to see them, you know, in the air by the spring?

William Wallis
I think it’s highly unlikely. I think his announcements in the last 24 hours keep the Rwanda policy vaguely in contention. But it doesn’t make it likely that the government will be able to put it into operation any time soon, nor that it could go through without the UK getting snarled up in a whole fresh range of legal challenges.

There are one or two dissenting views on the legal side who support the government and think there is a pass through that the new treaty would deal with the court’s concerns that the Rwanda government would send people back to their country of origin by legally ruling that out, and then that the emergency legislation would essentially rule out challenges on the grounds of domestic law.

Those views are pretty rare and you can see that it is gonna be a great big bunfight along the way. There is as yet no evidence that the policy of sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda will actually have the required effect of stopping small boats from crossing the channel into the UK.

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, are you also sceptical?

Stephen Bush
Yeah, I’m very dubious that it will get through parliament. It was not in the 2019 manifesto, so the House of Lords can block it. So the reason why under Theresa May the government was finally able to deport Abu Qatada, who was accused of fomenting terrorism and supporting (inaudible) and all sorts of other things, was that they were able to sign a legally binding accord with Jordan to say that he wouldn’t be tortured, which meant that it became compliant with the UK’s obligations on the human rights law.

So you can see how it is in theory possible that you sign something with the Rwandan government where you effectively say, well, if you are sent to Rwanda because you’re trying to seek asylum in the UK, the Rwandan government promises to have a higher standard of freedom for you than refugees who come to Rwanda organically and, indeed, many would argue, you know, ordinary Rwandan citizens, full stop. However, I think that’s gonna be quite a difficult argument to sell to the House of Lords and I just therefore can’t see how it would get through the House of Lords quickly enough, if at all, let alone the inevitable legal test of whether or not that legally binding new treaty were, you know, were fine. And I just . . . yeah, I just don’t think it will happen this time with the election.

Lucy Fisher
Well, it’s pretty worrying then, George, for the party, isn’t it? We’ve heard Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, say that, you know, they cannot afford to fail. He said, I don’t see a path to victory at the next election unless we resolve this issue. There is this sense that immigration is now almost existential for the Conservative party, and perhaps that’s why we heard the, to my mind, utterly extraordinary intervention from Lee Anderson, vice-chair of the Tory party no less, essentially urging Sunak to ignore the judgment, ignore the law and press ahead with getting those flights going anyway.

George Parker
Well, again, I mean, this just goes to the heart of the mixed messaging we were talking about earlier. You know, this is the party of law and order whose vice-chair is going out publicly and saying, we should choose which laws of the land we wish to obey. I mean, if you stop and think about it, it’s absolutely absurd.

And, you know, of course, Rishi Sunak has made stopping the boats one of his five key pledges. The boats aren’t gonna stop. Though to Sunak’s credit, there has been some cut in the number of people crossing the channel this year. He says it’s down by a third. But nevertheless, it’s gonna remain as an issue. And you can see from looking at the opinion polling, it remains one of the top three issues for the voters and the fact it’s unresolved, the fact that the Rwanda policy has been their flagship response to this and looks like it will be unresolved the next election — plainly, that’s a problem for the Tories.

Lucy Fisher
William, final question to you. We’ve heard from some MPs — I’m thinking in particular of Natalie Elphicke, the Tory MP for Dover, you know, very much on the front line of the small boats crisis and the arrivals — she said, the Rwanda policy, dead in the water now; the government should move on and seek a new solution. You know, you cover home affairs. You’re very well versed in all the debate around irregular migration. Is there anything else you can see the government doing, aside from pursuing these legal avenues to forge ahead with the Rwanda policy?

William Wallis
I don’t think anyone thinks that it’s an easy problem to solve. There probably are always gonna be some people crossing the channel by boat. But what another way of approaching it might do to pursue much more rigorously better relations with the French, have processing centres on the other side of the channel, have better relations and returns agreements with more countries, notably with the European Union — something we used to have but no longer do.

And then on this side of the Channel, we should be processing asylum seekers’ claims much more rapidly, determining who’s eligible, who isn’t and removing those who aren’t — something that has, you know, almost dried up in recent years. So there are ways of doing it without creating these legally tricky policies like the Rwanda policy.

Lucy Fisher
William Wallace, thanks for joining.

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It’s not just the government’s team that looks different at the end of this week than it did at the beginning. Labour has also lost 10 of its shadow frontbenchers, who quit their roles in order to vote in favour of a ceasefire in Gaza. George, how serious is this rebellion for Keir Starmer?

George Parker
Well, at sheer scale, it’s serious. There’s more than 50 Labour MPs voting against the government line is, on the face of it, extremely serious. And it’s the biggest blow to Keir Starmer’s authority so far. But, and I would say this is a big but, this is a very self-contained issue. It’s an issue where plainly a lot of MPs feel they have to vote with their conscience on this. A lot of them will have Muslim constituents who are extremely upset about what’s going on in Gaza, evidently.

And I think Keir Starmer can probably, you know, it’s damaging, but I think he can basically brush this off. He will say that he’s asserted his authority over his party’s, insist that people should resign if they can’t toe the line on this. And I think for him, strategically, it was important to show that he was prepared to hold this line and take a line consistent with the British government’s current position and then do what the Americans are doing. I think that’s the big strategic challenge he was facing, and I think he felt he had to stick to it.

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, not that many high-profile names among the frontbenchers who rebelled and therefore resigned apart from perhaps Jess Phillips, the shadow minister previously for domestic violence and safeguarding. Quite a loss for Keir Starmer, and some around him lamenting her departure. Do you see a way back before the election or even after it for some of the people that have had to quit in order, as George said, follow their conscience, as they put it?

Stephen Bush
I mean, all of the people who’ve resigned will be back probably by the end of the year. (Lucy laughs) Actually, here’s a bet I feel fairly comfortable in making: on the last day of the, before, you know, December recess, which I think is the 22nd of December, a press release will arrive in all our inboxes and it will be Keir Starmer has appointed the following people to the front bench. Someone else will get moved in order to make it look like it isn’t just the 10 names coming back. We shouldn’t forget that, you know, thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson and arguably to Keir Starmer a little bit, there are very few Labour MPs, right, to the point that there are MPs who are retiring who are on the Labour front bench. So this is the second time that Sarah Owens has resigned from the front bench. She resigned over spy cops, ditto Dan Carden.

Lucy Fisher
Remind us who Sarah Owens is.

Stephen Bush
Sarah Owens is the MP for one of the Luton constituencies. I always get my norths and my souths confused; as is Rachel Hopkins, the other Luton MP, Dan Carden, MP for Liverpool. I want to say Walton, but angry listeners should feel free to tell me how silly I am. He resigned over spy cops. He will be back. Ditto so with Jess Phillips.

The bigger question with this rebellion is does this have a longer-run electoral cost in the seats where they’re competitive with the Greens — Brighton Pavilion where Caroline Lucas’s retirement gives them a once-in-a-generation opportunity to maybe take it back; Bristol, where Thangam Debbonaire, their shadow culture secretary, will face a very serious challenge from the Green leader Carla Denyer. What does it mean for the Labour SNP battleground? Now, because if those battles go poorly for the Labour party, I think the Labour party will then struggle with some of the quite difficult votes on the welfare cap, etc, etc because MPs will be worried that if they don’t stick to their left it will happen to them. But obviously, that’s a very long time in the future.

Lucy Fisher
And I just want to turn to one more topic. Next week it’s gonna be another news-packed seven days, I expect, the highlight of which we think at this point will be the Autumn Statement on Wednesday. George, just give us a sense of the backdrop economically to this and what we should be watching out for.

George Parker
Well, I think there are two statistics which were framed this Autumn Statement. The first one is more of a forecast by the Bank of England, is that the British economy is gonna flatline all the way through election year 2024 and into 2025. So Jeremy Hunt’s first objective is to deliver an Autumn Statement which generates economic growth.

The second one are the opinion polls, which show the Conservatives at least 20 points behind Labour, sometimes 24, even 25 points behind Labour. So not only does he have a massive economic challenge, he has a political challenge, which is to find ways of spending money to try to deliver tax cuts which could give a jolt to the Tory electoral fortunes. I think that’s the big question facing the chancellor. He’ll have a bit more money to spend. His so-called fiscal headroom will be bigger than previously thought. He’ll have some money for tax cuts. How much does he devote to business tax cuts to get the economy growing? How much does he devote to retail, personal tax cuts, for example, cuts to inheritance tax, to get the Tory poll raise himself?

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, what’s your guess on that dilemma that George has set out?

Stephen Bush
You know, I think, well, in numerical terms, most of the action will be on the getting the economy moving. And I think really the retail offer will almost certainly be solely focused on inheritance tax. But obviously taken together, that is going to be possibly not a political challenge for the Labour party, but quite a policy challenge for the Labour party because they rightly want to state for strategic reasons to saying they would not deviate from spending limit. But they’re already inheriting quite a tight spending round. And if quite a lot of that money goes on inheritance tax and things to stimulate the economy, then that will put all of those questions we had of, you know, whether or not they keep the two-child limit. All of that will come back to the fore, I think.

Lucy Fisher
Well, we’ll be back next week to discuss the detail in full.

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There’s just time now for the Political Fix stock picks. Stephen, who are you buying or selling this week?

Stephen Bush
So I’m actually going to sell James Cleverly, which might seem a bit counterintuitive, but you know, ultimately he’s just become, you know, the first black person to be home secretary ever. He’s in the box seat for the kind of establishment slot in the Conservative leadership race. But the Home Office has, with the exception of Theresa May, been the graveyard of leadership ambitions across all parties for a very long time. He’s inherited a piece of — very much my words, not his — bunch of, I think, stupid and unachievable pledges in that area. So I think that, you know, although he’s still in a good position, he faces a very difficult political challenge to maintain that strong position he has. And he may end up just as with Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Sajid Javid, Amber Rudd, another person who came into the Home Office, talked of as a future leader who left it via the back.

Lucy Fisher
(Inaudible). George, who are you buying or selling?

George Parker
Well, damn, that was exactly word for word what I was about to say Lucy, because I totally agree with Stephen. I mean, poor old, James Cleverly from sort of parading around the chanceries of the world as a leading statesman to having to deal with the mess of the Rwanda policy. Poor James Cleverly — and I think you did a good job with the Foreign Office.

Who shall I go for? Look, I’m going to sell Suella Braverman. As previously discussed, I think she’s burnt herself out with a very ill-advised departure letter, and I think that she will disappear into the Tory backbenchers in much the same way that Priti Patel did when she left the Home Office.

Lucy Fisher
Well, I’m going to buy Nigel Farage, who’s out of the jungle now. I did dip my toe into I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here during Matt Hancock’s turn. I don’t think I can quite face any more kangaroo genitals being chewed, but I think it is a chance for Farage to approach a new audience and maybe change some people’s perception of him. And I do think Cameron’s return, as we’ve been discussing this week, leaves a bit of a vacuum on the right that the Reform UK party might have some luck trying to fill. George, Stephen, thanks for joining.

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George Parker and Stephen Bush
Thanks, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes. So do check them out. They’re articles we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners. There’s also a link there to Stephen’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, do leave a review or a star rating. It really helps spread the word.

Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher and produced by Audrey Tinline. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Andrew Georgiades and Petros Gioumpasis were the broadcast engineers. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. We’ll meet again here next week.

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