Baroness Brazen faces the boot in vote today

COMMONWEALTH Secretary General Baroness Scotland faces losing her job in a vote by member nations today.

Sources indicated the former Labour attorney general – nicknamed ‘Baroness Brazen’ following a series of scandals – will be voted out, making her the first secretary general not to be reelected for a second term.

They said she had failed to provide effective and unified leadership ahead of the vote at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda.

She will be competing for the role against the Jamaican foreign minister Kamina Johnson Smith.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told MPs on Tuesday that the UK supports Mrs Johnson Smith.

Mrs Johnson Smith has rejected claims she is being used as a puppet by the British Government in a power struggle for the leadership of the Commonwealth. Mrs

‘Allegations of cronyism’

Johnson Smith welcomed Boris Johnson’s backing, but told The Times that any suggestion that she was as much a proxy candidate for the UK as Jamaica’s choice was ‘offensive’.

Baroness Scotland has been accused of withholding a report on the financing of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth secretariat, the body which she leads, received the review containing recommendations on its future funding earlier this month.

It followed a decision by the Commonwealth’s biggest funders to temporarily reduce support in 2020 following allegations of cronyism. A Commonwealth spokesman denied that publication of the report was deliberately delayed until after the leadership vote.