13 November 2023 , 11:58
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David Cameron’s shock political resurrection today saw him appointed Foreign Secretary without being an MP.
The former Prime Minister became a life peer - returning to Parliament through the backdoor as a Baron - seven years after quitting as MP for Witney, Oxon. He left Westminster in September 2016 having resigned as PM on the morning of June 24, 2016, just hours after the result of the previous day’s Brexit referendum became clear.
The last Foreign Secretary to hold the post from the unelected Lords rather than the elected Commons was Lord Peter Carrington, who resigned when Argentina invaded the Falklands in April 1982. The most recent comparable example of a senior political figure being parachuted back into the Cabinet having quit the Commons was when Peter Mandelson was summoned back to frontline politics as Business Secretary by Gordon Brown.
Peter Mandelson was Business Secretary from the House of Lords (Daily Mirror)At the time, the Prime Minister was suffering in the polls, an election was not far off and the under-pressure Premier needed a big beast by his side - someone who he could trust, who could offer advice on which he could rely and, crucially, who had experience. So it was that just before 9am today, Mr Cameron, 57, stepped out of a Land Rover Discovery and into Downing Street. He made the familiar walk towards the world’s most famous front door - the black entrance of No10 with the words “First Lord of the Treasury”, his old job, engraved on the brass letterbox - as an ordinary citizen; albeit one with the armed bodyguards that shadow all former PMs for the rest of their lives.
He left as a holder once again of the one of the four Great Offices of State - and a peer for the rest of his life.
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Critics of the bombshell move will say how poorly it reflects on the current crop of Conservative MPs that none of them is deemed worthy of occupying the Foreign Secretary’s ornate office in King Charles Street - and holding the role of Britain’s top diplomat on the world stage. But supporters believe it could - no more than could - remind centrist Conservatives why they voted Tory in 2015, handing Mr Cameron a shock Commons majority at that May’s general election.
Mr Cameron becomes the first former PM since Margaret Thatcher to accept a peerage. John Major took a knighthood as, eventually, did his successor Tony Blair. Gordon Brown remains title-less, as do Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss (though Mrs May can officially be called Lady May after Mr Johnson handed her husband Philip a knighthood).
Constitutionally, there was of course nothing stopping Rishi Sunak - who had only been an MP for 16 months when Mr Cameron resigned from No10 - anointing the ex-Premier Foreign Secretary. Democratically, it means the Foreign Secretary is no longer answerable to elected politicians.
And visually, bringing back a former PM who launched years of austerity and who - admittedly, unwittingly - paved the way for the UK to quit the EU, will be hugely controversial.