In a highly unusual attack on the police last week, Braverman said London’s police force was ignoring lawbreaking by “pro-Palestinian mobs.” She described demonstrators calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war as “hate marchers.” She repeated the claims in an article for the Times of London that was not approved in advance by the prime minister’s office, as would usually be the case.

Sunak had been under growing pressure to fire Braverman - a hard-liner popular with the party's authoritarian wing - from one of the most senior jobs in government, responsible for handling immigration and policing.īraverman, a 43-year-old lawyer, has become a leader of the party’s 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 “tofu-eating wokerati.” Last month she called migration a “hurricane” heading for Britain and described homelessness as “a lifestyle choice.” Prominent right-wing lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg said sacking Braverman was “a mistake, because Suella understood what the British voter thought and was trying to do something about it.” It could win back centrist voters dismayed by the party's lurch to the right, at risk of losing Brexit-backing working-class voters who switched support to the Conservatives from Labour during the last national election in 2019. But his decision to appoint Cameron and dismiss Braverman will likely infuriate the Conservative Party’s right wing and inflame tensions in the party that Sunak has sought to soothe. Sunak was a strong backer of the winning “leave” side in the referendum. “The concern must be, however, that these could be outweighed by the controversial legacy he brings too,” she said. He resigned the day after voters opted to leave.īronwen Maddox, director of international affairs think-tank Chatham House, said Cameron “will bring undoubted strengths into the top team and to the U.K.’s relationships abroad,” where many will welcome him as “a heavyweight and moderate foreign secretary.” Cameron called a 2016 EU membership referendum, confident the country would vote to stay in the bloc. He also announced a short-lived “golden era” in U.K.-China relations shortly before that relationship soured.Īnd he will be forever remembered as the unwitting author of Brexit, a rupture that roiled Britain's politics, economy and place in the world. airstrikes against President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria. In 2013, he tried and failed to gain Parliament's backing for U.K. As prime minister, he backed a NATO-led military intervention in Libya in 2011 that toppled Moammar Gadhafi and deepened that country's chaos.

“I hope that six years as prime minister, 11 years leading the Conservative Party, gives me some useful experience and contacts and relationships and knowledge that I can help the prime minister to make sure we build our alliances, we build partnerships with our friends, we deter our enemies and we keep our country strong,” Cameron, 57, told broadcasters.Ĭameron's foreign policy legacy is mixed. “I know it's not usual for a prime minister to come back in this way,” the now-Lord Cameron acknowledged. The government said Cameron had been appointed to Parliament's unelected upper chamber, the House of Lords, alongside his new job. It's rare for a non-lawmaker to take a senior government post, and it has been half a century since a former prime minister held a Cabinet job.

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.Ĭameron's appointment surprised seasoned politics-watchers. Join our hosts as they take you in and out of courtrooms in the U.S. Courthouse News’ podcast Sidebar tackles the stories you need to know from the legal world.

Unique leader records store