13 November 2023 , 13:46
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Bunging a widely-loathed, scandal-hit grifter a peerage is par for the course in Westminster. But hoping he saves your bacon is an extra-special form of delusion.
Rishi Sunak will be praised in some quarters for bringing back a "Tory big beast" with "heft" and "statesmanship", and other silly words often used by people who are never asked to explain what medicines they're on.
But by making David Cameron his Foreign Secretary, with a peerage to get him into government because there's no way anyone would elect him ever again, the PM has shown a breathtaking tendency towards political suicide.
In short, this morning's Rishi-shuffle is brilliant news for everyone except the PM, and here's why.
In 2021, a committee of MPs accused David Cameron of "a significant lack of judgement" over the fact he lobbied the government to let Greensill Capital, a firm which paid him a total of around $10m in a little over 2 years, provide Covid business loans. The firm later went bust, costing 440 jobs and massive losses for international investors.
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It is that same man, with "a significant lack of judgement" and who personally pigged out as some very rich global figures lost 7-figure sums, who is now implementing foreign policy. The cocktail parties are going to be a thrill.
YouGov polling shows that Cameron is widely recognised, and hated by about three times more people than like him. He is not going to detoxify Brand Sunak so much as dip it in radioactive austerity, roll it in a braying posh-boys gutter, and stuff it in a pig's mouth without seeking consent.
Sunak has opened his shower door this morning, found Cameron in it, and decided the past 7 years of post-Brexit chaos without Ed Miliband was all a dream. He has donned waterskis and jumped a very sleek and well-fed shark. He is wondering where Kansas has got to just as a large house is spiralling out of the sky towards him.
This man has experience as an international statesman, understands government and won't rock the boat. He will, though, not plug the leaks or contribute to the good steering of the vessel, and the only heft he adds will just make the Tories sink faster.
Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and her husband Philip John May (Justin Tallis/AFP)Sunak's problem is not something Cameron can fix. He cannot alter the fact the Tories are 20 points behind in the polls. He cannot mend the splits in the party which created a gammony rump of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists", to nick a phrase from a former PM of this parish. And appointing him only makes the voter think the Tories have resorted to unelectable retreads.
It puts the last nail in the coffin of Sunak's laughable bid to brand himself as the change candidate. And it will merely speed up things like the three other resignations we had today (so far), and which will get far less attention.
Jesse Norman, the MP for Hereford and Transport Minister, quit saying he wanted "more time to campaign on the River Wye", which for those who don't know has been called a "dying river", with pollution levels 175% above targets allegedly due to chicken manure running off local farms.
Literally - and I promise I'm not making this up, as another Home Secretary once said - but someone would rather deal with an actual river of s*** than stay in Sunak's government a second longer.
David Cameron relaxes on a train after a successful day campaigning in East Anglia for the local elections campaign (Andrew Parsons/PA Wire)Schools minister Nick Gibb has quit and will step down as an MP to become a diplomat, presumably because the Middle East conflict would be more fun. Colchester's Will Quince has resigned as health minister to spend more time on training to be an army officer, perhaps because he'd rather be bullied by people who know what they're doing.
Meanwhile Harborough's Neil O'Brien has quit as another health minister because he would rather post pictures on Twitter of a fluffy sheep made by one of his young children than have to explain why the NHS is in the toilet.
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To lose one unwilling minister when you change their pigswill is unfortunate. To have three who prefer care in the community to whatever the hell is going on in Downing Street is a clear indication that HMS Sunak has multiple holes below the waterline, and the crew have given up pointing it out to the captain.
I'd make a joke about them stealing the lifeboats, but Cameron cut back on those in 2010. Now all they've got are whatever inflatables made it across the Channel and Suella Braverman didn't send back to the traffickers she did such an admirable job of helping.
And while all this is going on, Braverman - so unpopular in her party a year ago that her leadership bid lasted just two days - has built a power base.
In 2022, she got only 32 votes from her fellow Tory MPs in the leadership election, polling showed the public didn't recognise her, and only 3% of Tory members wanted her to be leader. A year on, having done nothing but say "Rwanda" a lot and accuse other people of being unacceptable, the public know exactly who she is, and a large chunk of Tory grass roots believe the tent-burning, boat-blocking, rhetoric enough to overlook the fact she failed to do either.
When the Supreme Court rules on her dodgy asylum policies on Wednesday, when YUMAN ROITS dominate the news, whenever there's capital to be gained from division she'll be there, piling up the only support she needs - from party members - while undermining Sunak's government, convincing voters to abandon the Tories, and making her case to be the leader of a Neo-Tory dystopia in which the party of pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps wants to pull everyone down to their level.
Lord Hameron can't fix that, in fact he's highly likely to use his "significant lack of judgement" to seed more scandal. Sunak may not even have a year left. With his ministers abandoning him and his party splintered, I'll be surprised if he's not spitroasted by Easter.