Rudd returns to the fold
May promotes Eurosceptic former banker and returns Amber Rudd to front benches in mini-reshuffle
Amber Rudd, the former home secretary and prominent Remainer, has returned to the Cabinet, replacing Esther Mcvey as Work and Pensions Secretary. She immediately gave Theresa May her backing, saying she expected her to survive as Prime Minister
STEPHEN BARCLAY, a middle-ranking health minister, is the new Brexit Secretary after two Cabinet ministers turned down the job.
He was appointed by Theresa May after Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, and Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, declined to take the job. He replaces Dominic Raab, who quit on Thursday over her Brexit policy.
Mr Barclay’s elevation to one of the most important jobs in Government was part of a mini-reshuffle triggered by the resignations of four Brexiteer Cabinet ministers over the Prime Minister’s deal for taking the UK out of the European Union.
And Amber Rudd, the former home secretary and prominent Remainer, has returned to the Cabinet, replacing Esther Mcvey as Work and Pensions Secretary.
No 10 said that Mr Barclay would be in charge of domestic preparations for Brexit, both for a deal and no deal, and that Mrs May would be in charge of the negotiations in Brussels for the next 10 days.
Mr Gove, who had been reported to be on the edge of resigning, said he had confidence in the Prime Minister as he went back to work at the environment department. “I am looking forward to continuing to work with all colleagues in Government and in Parliament to get the best future for Britain,” he said.
Mr Barclay, who voted to leave the European Union at the 2016 referendum, could face awkward questions over the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, which recommends that Britain stays in a customs union if there is no deal by the end of 2020.
When criticising plans by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, to keep the UK in the customs union in March he said Britain “cannot have an independent trade policy” if the UK remained in a customs union.
He wrote in a blog: “Under Labour we would be unable to sign our own trade deals around the globe,” adding that the “confused policy would be bad for jobs and wages, would leave us unable to sign up to comprehensive free trade deals and it doesn’t respect the result of the referendum”.
The father of three and trained lawyer who worked as a banker was a Government whip before his spell as a health minister. He entered Parliament as MP for North East Cambs in 2010. The son of a trade union official father and a civil servant mother, the 42-yearold describes himself as coming from a “working class northern background” in Lancashire.
Ms Rudd, an ally of Mrs May who only entered politics in her 40s, said the appointment was a “great honour” and she “looked forward to getting stuck in”.
The former investment banker entered Parliament as MP for Hastings and Rye in 2010 and returns to the Cabinet after a seven-month spell on the backbenches caused by her resignation over the Windrush scandal. Ms Rudd wrongly told MPS there were no targets to remove immigrants but it was three months later when she was forced to resign after it was revealed that more than 60 UK citizens had been incorrectly deported to the Caribbean.
Later, an official inquiry cleared Ms Rudd of wrongdoing, finding that civil servants had given her the wrong advice on the existence of deportation targets. She had been appointed home secretary in July 2016 and was widely tipped as a likely successor to Mrs May.
The year before, in a 2016 EU referendum debate with leading Brexiteer Boris Johnson, she said: “Boris is the life and soul of the party but he is not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.”
During last year’s election Ms Rudd
‘She has come forward with a really practical response to leaving the EU. I think it’s the right combination’
won respect among MPS when she stood in for Mrs May in a live televised election debate just days after her father had died.
Since standing down Ms Rudd has been a loyal backbencher and spoke in support of embattled Mrs May on Thursday this week as she faced three hours of hostile questioning in the Commons over her Brexit deal.
Ms Rudd said yesterday that she was confident Mrs May would survive as Prime Minister, saying: “I think she has demonstrated this week her complete commitment to making sure she serves the people she was elected to so do. She has come forward with a really practical response to leaving the European Union. I think it’s the right combination.”
Mr Barclay tweeted that he was “delighted” to accept his new job: “We now need to keep up the momentum to finalise the Withdrawal Agreement and outline political declaration and deliver a Brexit that works for the whole UK.”
In other moves, Kwasi Kwarteng, a former ministerial aide to Chancellor Philip Hammond, replaced Suella Braverman as a minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union.
Stephen Hammond replaced Mr Barclay as a senior health minister, while John Penrose became a Northern Ireland minister, replacing Shailesh Vara.
Westminster observers noted that the promotions of Mr Kwarteng and Mr Penrose potentially removes two possible rebels from the backbenches. Mr Kwarteng is a staunch Brexiteer while Mr Penrose is a remainer who signed up to the pro-leave cause.
Earlier this year he signed a letter on behalf of 60 Brexiteers demanding Mrs May ensure Britain could change its laws without Brussels’ approval from the moment it left the bloc in March. The group also demanded the UK be “free to start its own trade negotiations” from day one of the transition period. Christopher Hope presents Chopper’s Brexit Podcast weekly at choppersbrexitpodcast.telegraph.co.uk