Six questions Rishi Sunak must answer in appointing his cabinet

Published

2 years ago

October 25, 2022

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Rishi Sunak has one chance to get his top team right.

This is not a reshuffle (they are usually tweaks and tinkering). And by sacking or demoting colleagues, a prime minister can create enemies.

Today is instead an opportunity to do something far bigger – build a new government from scratch, ideally one that lasts until the next general election.

Sunak prepares to address nation as Truss holds final cabinet – new PM latest

Life has come fast at Mr Sunak in recent days, but he had six weeks during the summer leadership contest to consider who he might appoint to which department.

There are six key questions he should have considered:

What message does he want to send to his party and the country?

The last two prime ministers prioritised loyalty, but early signs suggest Mr Sunak prizes competence.

Expect a more meritocratic approach – partly to ensure effective government, but also to unite the disparate factions on the government benches.

However, after such a resounding victory, Mr Sunak has the power to ditch nobler aims and be utterly ruthless.

Who does he keep?

Jeremy Hunt in the Treasury and Ben Wallace at the Ministry of Defence are the cabinet ministers most likely to stay in post.

Yet Mr Wallace’s keenness to keep defence spending at 3% of GDP in straitened times may count against him.

Mr Sunak could allow his ally Grant Shapps to remain running the Home Office, although Dominic Raab is reported to have eyes on that job.

Most of Liz Truss’s ill-fated team are likely to be cleared out. A few may appear in new departments.

3) What does Rishi Sunak do with the two leadership rivals he has crushed?

Penny Mordaunt is likely to be offered a more senior job than her current post as leader of the Commons. She is said to have designs on the Foreign Office.

As for Boris Johnson, allies of Mr Sunak have insisted he has a role to play in public life “domestically and internationally”. But is now the time?

In the golden year post-premiership, Mr Johnson may prefer to earn hundreds of thousands a pop making corporate speeches than run a government department.

Does Liz Truss deserve a shot at redemption?

Polling suggests she remains utterly toxic with voters. It is hard to imagine Mr Sunak would be keen to have his predecessor’s face selling any part of his policy agenda.

Reports suggest she may now “take a break” from frontline politics.

To whom has the PM promised jobs?

In the shady horse-trading of leadership races, we may never find out what – if anything – has been offered to whom.

Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch’s consequential endorsements over the weekend could lead them to getting ministerial gigs.

Ms Badenoch is understood to be keen to stay at International Trade.

How do you reward loyal lieutenants?

Many MPs put in a lot of legwork during Mr Sunak’s first abortive leadership effort.

Mr Raab repeatedly hit the airwaves for his man, and described Ms Truss’s economic proposals as an “electoral suicide note”.

Mel Stride led the campaign, and former chief whip Gavin Williamson is said to have been invaluable behind the scenes.

The difficult reality for the new prime minister is that he has far fewer cabinet jobs to dole out than Conservative MPs who think they are owed one.

Many will be left disappointed tonight.

At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

Published

2 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.

A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.

They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.

Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.

Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.

The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.

The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.

All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.

Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.

It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.

The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.

COP29: UN climate summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, warn leading figures

Published

4 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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COP29: UN climate summits 'no longer fit for purpose', warn leading figures

UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.

An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.

The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.

“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.

“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”

The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.

It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.

Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.

COP29 Analysis:
There’s already a risk COP29 will end in failure
Changes to our lives are certain if PM meets bold climate target

The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.

This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.

Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.

While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.

COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.

Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.

In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.

“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.

Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.

“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.

“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”

Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.

Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.

“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.

“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.

“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”

COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.

Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.

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Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners

Published

20 hours ago

November 14, 2024

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Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to 'smoke out' thousands of illegal miners

A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.

The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.

Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.

It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.

The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.

Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.

A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.

It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.

“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.

Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.

In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.

Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.

Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.

The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.

Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.

Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.