The firm has been modified in accordance with the Prime Minister’s priorities: innovation and the economy. At the head of the Conservative Party, Greg Hands will have to prepare the campaign for the next 2024 general elections, which promise to be complicated for the Tories.
by Cécile Ducourieux (London, correspondent)
Three months after his arrival at 10, Downing Street, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak carried out a first ministerial reshuffle on Tuesday, February 7, to try to establish his authority on a conservative party still so dissipated, draw a line On scandals inherited from the Boris Johnson era and improve the chances (very thin) of the Tories to maintain themselves in power in the next general elections, in 2024.
This nominations train was expected: it was necessary to designate a new president of the party after Rishi Sunak had to dismiss Nadhim Zahawi, an ex-minister of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss who had negotiated a huge tax recovery with the administration Taxes, in the summer of 2022, when he was Minister of Finance, but who had concealed this little glorious episode to the media as to the Prime Minister.
It is Greg Hands, a discreet and experienced elected official, minister almost continuous since 2011, that Rishi Sunak chose. The only task of this moderate – he voted for the maintenance in the European Union (EU) in 2016 – will be to prepare the party for the general elections.
Rishi Sunak flanked him with an assistant noisy: Lee Anderson, a defector from the Labor Party, ex-midor who became convinced and elected conservative in the midlands in the 2019 elections. This typical deputy for “Red Wall”, These historically working lands converted to the right, is in favor of an ultra-restrictive migration policy and often makes the headlines of the tabloid press for its filters.
His appointment is probably intended to satisfy the right wing of the Tories, worries that the Prime Minister is close to concluding a compromise with the EU on the “Protocol”, the post-Brexit customs arrangement for Ireland of the Ireland North.
a gloomy economic situation
The Prime Minister took the opportunity to reshape his cabinet in accordance with his priorities: innovation and the economy. Grant Shapps, a faithful, ex-minister of transport, inherits a new portfolio of “energy security and carbon neutrality”, testifying to a new interest in British power in the industrial strategy and the security of its channels ‘supply. Michelle Donelan swaps the Ministry of Culture for that of science, innovation and technology. Kemi Badenoch, a rising value of the party, is promoted to a Ministry of Business and Trade.
With his discreet and managerial style, his work capacity and his attention to details (quite the opposite of Boris Johnson), Rishi Sunak managed to appease his party. But he has not yet taken it back in hand: he preferred to retreat at the beginning of a mutiny: he thus renounced the ban on terrestrial solar panels and accepted a tightening of the law of regulating content online.
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