Voices: Sunak is keeping his friends close – and his enemies closer

On the day the Queen died, Suella Braverman sent a tweet wishing her “a full and swift recovery”. Nothing wrong in that; it was what we all hoped, of course. What surprised Whitehall officials was that the tweet was sent at 4.50pm, more than three hours after the BBC’s Huw Edwards donned his black tie.

Braverman was not an out of the loop backbencher. She was home secretary. Civil servants groaned when they saw the tweet, citing it as evidence of “poor judgement” and an “amateurish political and comms operation”.

Eyebrows in Whitehall are twitching again today after Rishi Sunak made Braverman home secretary, six days after she was sacked from the post by Liz Truss. We can only conclude that Sunak took so seriously the threat of Boris Johnson pipping him to the Tory leadership that he promised Braverman her not very old job back. It made a nonsense of his promise of “integrity” and “accountability” since she was sacked for breaking the ministerial code, and of his pledge of “professionalism,” given Braverman’s chaotic 43-day reign at the Home Office.

She openly flouted the rules of cabinet collective responsibility to set out her personal views on immigration, human rights laws and drugs policy. That was the real reason Truss fired her, not the official one – sending a message to a Tory backbencher about a market-sensitive government policy from her personal email. “Suella hasn’t stopped running for the leadership since Boris quit,” one minister told me.

She will have to stop now. Braverman will need to become a team player. She is lucky to return to such a senior post; some ministers expected her to land a lesser one.

Sunak aides presented his reshuffle as a “cabinet of all the Tory talents” but a “team of all the Tory factions” is more accurate. Braverman, a former chair of the European Research Group, is the darling of the hardline Brexiteers. Sunak needed to put at least one woman in a senior job. He could have made Penny Mordaunt home secretary, but that would have angered right-wingers who see her as “woke”.

Regrettably, the reshuffle leaves only six women attending meetings of the 30-strong cabinet. Although I think the calibre overall is higher than the Truss and Johnson cabinets, several women good enough to make the top team have missed out.

Sunak’s mantra is to "keep your friends close and your enemies closer". It’s fitting that Michael Corleone said it in The Godfather. Sunak is no Mafia boss but he does have many enemies. Appointing a cabinet of chums didn’t work for Truss or Johnson, who left too many dangerous enemies lurking on the backbenches. Sunak is right to keep some of his in his tent. This isn’t the team Sunak really wanted and he might well have another reshuffle if he can run a stable ship for several months.

Braverman’s appointment shows Sunak will stick to the controversial policy of sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda, though it will be largely symbolic. If it fails, Braverman will have to own it. Her goal of stopping all cross-Channel migration in small boats will probably remain a distant dream, though Sunak will pursue the one way to do it – better relations with France.

Even Tory centrists support tough talk on border controls to appeal to red wall voters and create a dividing line with Labour. The Tories will need all the ammunition they can get because they won’t have much to throw at Labour on the economy.

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In practice, I suspect Sunak’s policy on immigration will be less harsh than it sounds, and will not reflect Braverman’s desire to reduce net annual migration from 239,000 to under 100,000. She will be outgunned by other key players in the debate on whether to increase immigration to fill labour shortages and boost growth – the Sunak allies Jeremy Hunt (chancellor), Grant Shapps (business), Mel Stride (work and pensions) and Robert Jenrick (immigration, with an enhanced role attending the cabinet).

Michael Gove’s return to his old job is welcome and shows Sunak takes levelling up seriously – unlike Truss who, bizarrely, could hardly bring herself to utter Johnson’s slogan. A senior Labour figure whispered: “Gove is the only Tory who really gets levelling up. His white paper was good – their best stab at it.”

Sunak rightly tried to send ministers to departments they already know to limit the damaging churn caused by the Tories’ turmoil, which has given us five education secretaries this year and 13 housing ministers since the Tories took power in 2010.

Sunak couldn’t give jobs to everyone he wanted to keep in his tent. He knows he could still be blown off course by mutinous Tory backbenchers who are addicted to rebellion. He is gambling that his “unite or die” message persuades his enemies within to give his government a chance to function normally. But when he moves from personnel to policy, with spending cuts and tax rises inevitable, his hopes may go the same way as Braverman’s dream of zero cross-channel migration.