Rishi Sunak Goes Back to the Future

When David Cameron resigned as prime minister in 2016 the morning after Britons voted to leave the EU, he must have thought that his political career had come to an untimely end. Declining, like most recent prime ministers, the customary offer of a seat in the House of Lords, he has devoted himself to business and charitable activities.

But he has now been brought back to Rishi Sunak’s government as foreign secretary—and into the House of Lords to make the position possible. He is the first ex-prime minister to return since Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who became foreign secretary between 1970 and 1974 after having served as prime minister from 1963 to 1964.

The Cameron appointment was made for three reasons. First, he brings a much-needed element of experience to the government. Sunak, after all, has been a member of Parliament only since 2015, and few of his ministers have a recognizable public profile. But Cameron has met the world’s big players—Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and, above all, U.S. President Joe Biden. Cameron’s premiership from 2010 to 2016 coincided almost wholly with the Obama presidency, Joe Biden was the vice president. He is likely to be welcomed at the White House. He also knows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a useful relationship in a time of war.

Second, the Cameron appointment signifies that Sunak seeks to govern not from the right, but from the center. A key feature of the reshuffle was the sacking of the already once-fired Suella Braverman, the controversial home secretary and a favorite of right-wing Conservatives. She had spoken insensitively on homelessness, declaring it “a lifestyle choice.” More crucially, she had infuriated the prime minister by breaking collective responsibility when she ignored his concerns in relation to an article that she had contributed to the Times of London, which critics argued had sought to undermine the operational independence of the police in advance of a large pro-Palestinian march last week.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Sunak badly needs to rejuvenate the Conservative Party, which appears tired, uncertain, and lacking direction—having been in government for 13 years either alone or in coalition. The Conservatives have, according to survey evidence, been between 15 and 20 percent behind the Labour Party in the polls for many months.

Were this to be replicated in a general election, which must be held some time before January 2025, Labour would win a landslide greater than that secured by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who in 1997 gained a majority of 179 seats. Indeed, since 1964, no party that has been so far ahead at this stage of a parliamentary term has failed to gain the most votes in the ensuing general election.

And governmental reshuffles, however imaginative, rarely alter the political weather. No disillusioned Conservative is likely to say—now that Cameron has been brought back to government and Braverman has been sacked, “I can safely return to the fold.”

In 2008, Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown sought to renew a government that had been in power for nine years by appointing Peter Mandelson, an EU commissioner, to the post of first secretary of state and business secretary. But it did not save Labour, which lost 94 seats in the 2010 election and found itself in opposition.

The Conservative Party faces two fundamental problems. The first is that it seems to have no philosophy with which to meet the cost-of-living crisis and a widespread feeling that public services—in particular health care, social care, and housing—are not working effectively.

The Conservatives have not yet confronted this problem and appear to have no clear sense of direction. Since Brexit, they have been unable to decide whether they are an interventionist or free-market party, whether they believe in an active government or one which tells voters not to look to the state to resolve their problems.

To many, Sunak appears more like a chief executive than a leader, a politician trained at Stanford Business School as a problem-solver, but unable to provide what the elder George Bush once called “the vision thing.” He is seen as a Herbert Hoover or a Jimmy Carter—not a Franklin Roosevelt or a Ronald Reagan who actually gets things done.

But just possibly, the Cameron appointment indicates a strategic reset for the government, even though only a short while ago, Sunak spoke of 30 years of governmental failure. Now he has appointed one of the architects of that supposed failure to the Foreign Office.

The second problem that the Conservatives face is that of reconciling two opposed constituencies. It is a familiar observation that social democratic parties in Europe (and perhaps also the U.S. Democrats) need to satisfy two different social groups—a working class that has traditionally been a core constituency of parties of the moderate left but is now in decline, as well as a growing professional and graduate middle class.

But the Conservatives also have to reconcile opposing constituencies—the so-called blue wall of traditional Tory seats largely in the south of England, such as Wimbledon, perhaps under threat from the Liberal Democrats and the red wall seats in the north, such as Workington, traditionally Labour, but won by the Conservatives in 2019 on a “Get Brexit Done” ticket. In the United States, it is the conflict between Silicon Valley and Scranton.

These two groups tend to favor very different policies. The traditional working class tends to be strongly patriotic, hostile to immigration and multiculturalism, and on the so-called anti-woke side in the culture wars in both countries. In Britain, the working class voted for Brexit, while in the United States many in this group supported Donald Trump. Many graduate professionals in Britain these days, by contrast, are internationalist—more at home in Brussels than in Bolton.

The test of a good leader is to reconcile conflicting constituencies. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did it for the Conservatives in the 1980s and Blair for Labour after 1997. In 2019, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson succeeded in uniting the red wall and the blue wall with his slogan of “Get Brexit done.” Remarkably, the traditional class basis of British politics was turned on its head.

Two psephologists, Matthew Goodwin and Oliver Heath, showed in a report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the 2019 election that for the first time in their history, the Conservatives had outpolled Labour—by as much as 15 percent—among voters with low incomes.

Sunak has yet to show that he can repeat this trick. He faces a threat not just from Labour on his left, but also on his right from the Reform party, the heir to the United Kingdom Independence Party. UKIP was led for much of its existence by Nigel Farage, a brilliant communicator who is perhaps contemplating a return to politics, believing as he does that there is scope for a realignment on the right.

But, of course, Americans and others from the wider world will be less concerned with the ins and outs of the government reshuffle than with Cameron’s foreign-policy attitudes. He is best known for having led the campaign to remain in the European Union in 2016. But having now accepted Brexit, he is in a strong position to recalibrate Britain’s relations with the continent, particularly in regard to defense.

The Russian attack on Ukraine was a wake-up call to Europe, the only one of the four biggest powers in the world — the others being the United States, Russia, and China — that cannot defend itself. Europe cannot expect its defense needs to be funded by the United States forever. Its countries must learn to work together and contribute more to their own needs.

Cameron’s foreign-policy strategy was that of a liberal interventionist. He helped to avoid a massacre in Libya and played some part in the removal of Muammar al-Qaddafi. It is not his fault that Libya has turned into a failed state. He sought to intervene against Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war when the dictator used chemical weapons, but he was defeated by a back-bench rebellion in the House of Commons.

U.K. foreign policy, however, depends less on who is foreign secretary and even less on what government is in power than it does on the ineluctable facts of international life. Were the Labour Party to win the next general election, as appears likely, a government led by Keir Starmer would not change things very much. Britain will continue its support of Ukraine and its hostility to extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.

Whoever is in power, Britain will remain a stable and tolerant democracy as well as a staunch, reliable ally. On these matters, the country is broadly united. It would be a mistake to believe that the vigorous and sometimes raucous inter- and intraparty debate in Britain indicates any weakening of resolve.