New Cabinet must be ‘meritocratic’

LIZ TRUSS has been urged not to pack her Cabinet with loyalist MPS, as early plans suggest almost none of Rishi Sunak’s backers will receive jobs if she wins.

The leadership frontrunner is expected to announce a series of appointments for her closest allies if she wins the contest today, including Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor and James Cleverly as foreign secretary.

Suella Braverman, another major backer, has been tipped for a job as home secretary, while Jacob Reesmogg could be given a job in the Treasury or as business secretary.

MPS have warned Ms Truss against stacking the Cabinet full of supportive MPS on the Right of the party, which they say would create divisions that could destabilise her government and make it harder to win a general election.

David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said yesterday he was “slightly worried” that the Cabinet would entirely favour MPS who supported her during the contest.

“There is a real risk the party will feel divided and if that’s the case we won’t win the next election, so it’s going to be really important she pulls people in,” he told Sky News. “The greatest mistake Boris Johnson made, there were a few, but right back to the beginning…was the fact he basically created a Cabinet of loyalists. It wasn’t a meritocratic Cabinet – it wasn’t the best people.”

After Mr Johnson secured two-thirds of members’ votes in the 2019 contest, on a turnout of 87 per cent, he decided to demote prominent supporters of Jeremy Hunt, his leadership rival.

While Ms Truss’s Cabinet is thought to have been worked out already in meetings at Chevening, the Foreign Secretary’s grace-and-favour country home, some MPS believe the final team will depend on what proportion of Tory members voted for her.