Why a new cabinet under Liz Truss could look much like the old one

Bad news for those hoping that the new prime minister will provide a fresh start. That includes many Conservatives who accept change at the top was needed, but had hoped for a cleaner break with the past and not to see familiar old faces back around the cabinet table. Sadly, the next cabinet will be as uninspiring as Johnson’s lacklustre bunch.

Two of the oldest and best-known faces, after all, are Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss themselves, and one or other will be the face of Global Britain – if you can stand the thought. President Biden, Chancellor Sholz, President Macron, Taoiseach Martin, President Zelensky and so many others who were so bemused by Boris Johnson will have to get used to another Tory at the top.

One thing we can be reasonably sure about is that Truss, after what she’s said about Sunak’s stewardship of the economy, probably won’t be invited to serve in his cabinet, and nor he in hers. It’s difficult to see what Sunak might do next if not in No 10; the backbenches or the Lords are unlikely to hold much allure for him. It’s possible he would leave politics altogether, as George Osborne did, and set out to make some more money. It would get a potentially harsh critic out of the way for Truss. By contrast, if she lost the contest, Truss would probably hang around waiting for something to turn up, even if that eventually turns out to be Leader of the Opposition.

A Truss cabinet wouldn’t mark much of a change. Her close friend and adviser, Kwasi Kwarteng, currently business secretary, might well be chancellor (he certainly wants it) and he’s as mad keen on tax cuts as she is. She might magnanimously offer her current job to defeated candidate Tom Tugendhat, chair of the foreign affairs select committee. Alternatively she might promote Ben Wallace to foreign secretary from defence, and slot Tugendhat in there.

Truss would also want to give a big job to fourth-placed Kemi Badenoch, who had such a successful run; a role where her conservative instincts can be followed to electoral advantage. That would suggest the home office or education – departments that suffered instability and loss of morale in recent years. Therese Coffey, who did so much to defuse social security as a source of controversy, is also talked of as a possible new home secretary. Priti Patel, who once harboured leadership ambitions of her own, seems set for demotion or perhaps deportation from the cabinet altogether.

More tricky would finding a place for Penny Mordaunt, who has faced such hostility from her own party and the rabidly pro-Truss Daily Mail. She’s already been in cabinet, at overseas development and briefly at defence, so she could return to those roles or could be promoted within her current department to take over international trade where relations with the incumbent, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, have deteriorated somewhat (Ms Trevelyan backed Tugendhat and then Sunak, and cast aspersions on Ms Mordaunt’s work ethic, to visible irritation). Ms Mordaunt would also be a popular party chair heading into a difficult general election.

And in the clearest signal of a further shift rightwards, Truss is also expected to offer cabinet positions to Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries. Those two will provide reliable support in the cabinet for Truss, just as they did for Johnson in his worst days. Despite rejecting so much of Tories’ recent record, and indeed the ruling orthodoxies of the last two decades, Truss’ radical economic ideas are not matched by a snake-up in personnel. They will look and sound much the same as they do now, and that’s not going to give the electorally attractive aura of a fresh ‘new’ government.

In the event of Sunak premiership, there will be much more continuity of economic policy. Indeed, stepping up from the Treasury, Sunak is likely to be ‘his own chancellor’, so to speak. Eerily, the idea of uniting Number 10 and Number 11 – hatched by Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson, prompting the resignation of Sajid Javid and rocketing Sunak into the role – would now come to fruition. The ‘Treasury view’ would retain its hold on budgets and policy-making. A more pliable figure like Mel Stride, former Treasury minister and chair of the select committee could conceivably move from Team Sunak to Cabinet Sunak. Alternatively, former Johnson loyalist and current health secretary, Steve Barclay, could slide in. He is a man whose demeanour suggests he finds it easy to say ‘no’.

A ‘government of all the talents’ has been promised by all the candidates, sometimes with satirical effect given the open contempt in which they hold their colleagues’ abilities. In that spirit, former hopefuls Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt, Suella Braverman and other prominent personalities such as Dominic Raab and Oliver Dowden also seem likely to be at the top table. We might even see some sort of comeback for those tarnished symbols of Tory misrule, Matt Hancock and Sir Gavin Williamson.

Safe as some of those pairs of hands might be, the public might be unconvinced any promised change is really happening.