It’s been dubbed the most right-wing cabinet for a generation, formed after new PM Liz Truss’ fulsome support for her predecessor and a purge of defeated rival Rishi Sunak loyalists.
London, September 9 (RHC)-- It’s been dubbed the most right-wing cabinet for a generation, formed after new PM Liz Truss’ fulsome support for her predecessor and a purge of defeated rival Rishi Sunak loyalists. Some of the familiar faces: Kwasi Kwarteng, a free marketeer and Truss’s ideological soulmate confirmed as chancellor.
Ex-leadership candidate Suella Braverman, admired by the righwing for her attacks on "woke" politics, appointed home secretary. Staunch ally James Cleverly promoted installed as foreign minister. On his in-tray, Ukraine and relations with the EU strained after Brexit among other things.
Close friend Therese Coffey will be deputy prime minister and health secretary. The national health service is reeling under a staff and cash crisis. Ben Wallace, the man who called the Russian president a lunatic, will keep his job as defence minister. And another carryover from the Johnson administration, Jacob Rees Mogg, now business and energy secretary who has blamed the UK energy crisis on climate alarmists.
Truss won less than 60 percent of the conservative party membership vote and in the first part of the contest, she was selected by fewer than a third of Conservative MPs, so she would probably have done herself a favor by trying to appeal to as wide a base of parliamentary support as possible.
Especially because she will need her party’s support for her plans for her three priorities: the economy, energy and the NHS. The 56th and third female UK Prime Minister takes up the reins of power as the UK toils under spiraling levels of inflation, skyrocketing energy costs, an economy almost certainly in recession, and public services on the brink. It remains to be seen if she and her cabinet can deliver on her promises.