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LONDON, 13 Nov (AP) \u2014 Former British Prime Minister David Cameron made a shock return to high office on Monday, becoming foreign secretary in a major shakeup of the Conservative government that also saw the firing of divisive Home Secretary Suella Braverman.<\/p>\n
Cameron, who led the U.K. government between 2010 and 2016, was appointed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in a Cabinet shuffle in which he sacked Braverman, a divisive figure who drew anger for accusing police of being too lenient with pro-Palestinian protesters.<\/p>\n
She was replaced by James Cleverly, who had been foreign secretary.<\/p>\n
Cameron\u2019s appointment came as a surprise to seasoned politics-watchers. It\u2019s rare for a non-lawmaker to take a senior government post, and it has been decades since a former prime minister held a Cabinet job.<\/p>\n
The government said Cameron was being appointed to Parliament\u2019s unelected upper chamber, the House of Lords. The last foreign secretary to serve in the Lords, rather than the elected House of Commons, was Peter Carrington, who was part of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher\u2019s government in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
Cameron, 57, said Britain was \u201cfacing a daunting set of international challenges, including the war in Ukraine and the crisis in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile I have been out of front-line politics for the last seven years, I hope that my experience \u2014 as Conservative leader for 11 years and prime minister for six \u2014 will assist me in helping the prime minister to meet these vital challenges,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Cameron\u2019s appointment brings back to government a leader brought down by Britain\u2019s decision to leave the European Union. Cameron called the 2016 EU membership referendum, confident the country would vote to stay in the bloc. He resigned the day after voters opted to leave.<\/p>\n
Sunak was a strong backer of the winning \u201cleave\u201d side in the referendum. Cameron\u2019s return, and Braverman\u2019s sacking, are likely to infuriate the Conservative Party\u2019s right wing and inflame tensions in the party that Sunak has sought to soothe.<\/p>\n
Prominent right-wing lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg said sacking Braverman was \u201ca mistake, because Suella understood what the British voter thought and was trying to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunak had been under growing pressure to fire Braverman \u2014 a hard-liner popular with the party\u2019s authoritarian wing \u2014 from one of the most senior jobs in government, responsible for handling immigration and policing.<\/p>\n
In a highly unusual attack on the police last week, Braverman said London\u2019s police force was ignoring lawbreaking by \u201cpro-Palestinian mobs.\u201d She described demonstrators calling for a cease-fire in Gaza as \u201chate marchers.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Saturday, far-right protesters scuffled with police and tried to confront a large pro-Palestinian march by hundreds of thousands through the streets of London. Critics accused Braverman of helping to inflame tensions.<\/p>\n
Last week Braverman wrote an article for the Times of London in which she said police \u201cplay favorites when it comes to protesters\u201d and acted more leniently toward pro-Palestinian demonstrators and Black Lives Matter supporters than toward right-wing protesters or soccer hooligans.<\/p>\n
The article was not approved in advance by the prime minister\u2019s office, as would usually be the case.<\/p>\n
Braverman said Monday that \u201cit has been the greatest privilege of my life to serve as home secretary,\u201d adding that she would \u201chave more to say in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n
Braverman, a 43-year-old lawyer, has become a leader of the party\u2019s populist wing by advocating ever-tougher curbs on migration and a war on human rights protections, liberal social values and what she has called the \u201ctofu-eating wokerati.\u201d Last month she called migration a \u201churricane\u201d that would bring \u201cmillions more immigrants to these shores, uncontrolled and unmanageable.\u201d<\/p>\n
As home secretary Braverman championed the government\u2019s stalled plan to send asylum-seekers who arrive in Britain in boats on a one-way trip to Rwanda. A U.K. Supreme Court ruling on whether the policy is legal is due on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Critics say Braverman has been building her profile to position herself for a party leadership contest that could come if the Conservatives lose power in an election expected next year.<\/p>\n
The bold changes are an attempt by Sunak to reset his faltering government. The Conservatives have been in power for 13 years, but opinion polls for months have put them 15 to 20 points behind the opposition Labour Party amid a stagnating economy, persistently high inflation, an overstretched health care system and a wave of public sector strikes.<\/p>\n
Last month Sunak tried to paint his government as a force of change, saying he would break the \u201c30-year status quo\u201d that includes the governments of Cameron and other Conservative predecessors.<\/p>\n
\u201cA few weeks ago, Rishi Sunak said David Cameron was part of a failed status quo. Now he\u2019s bringing him back as his life raft,\u201d said Labour lawmaker Pat McFadden.<\/p>\n
As well as bringing about Brexit, Cameron\u2019s government imposed years of public-spending cuts after the 2008 global financial crisis that have frayed the country\u2019s welfare system and state-funded health service. After leaving office he was caught up in a scandal over his lobbying for Greensill Capital, a financial services firm that later collapsed.<\/p>\n
Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said Cameron\u2019s appointment \u201cis a measure of the desperation that surrounds this government.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to believe that this is going to impress voters, whether they are convinced Brexiteers who despise David Cameron for being a remainer, or convinced remainers who despise David Cameron for holding and losing a referendum,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the upside, it\u2019s a useful distraction from Braverman\u2019s sacking, and as a former prime minister it will mean that the U.K. has rather more clout in international circles than perhaps might have been the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
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LONDON, 13 Nov (AP) \u2014 Former British Prime Minister David Cameron made a shock return to high office on Monday, becoming foreign secretary in a major shakeup of the Conservative government that also saw the firing of divisive Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Cameron, who led the U.K. government between 2010 and 2016, was appointed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-228436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}