The great ministerial merry go round continues at pace. Liz Truss’s triumph in the leadership race has seen a number of ambitious MPs enter government for the first time; among them is Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. His new frontbench role as security minister means he has to surrender his post as head of the backbench committee, triggering something of a bun fight over who gets to replace him.
Select committee chairmanships are highly valued prizes, bestowing the incumbent with prestige, profile and an extra £15,000 salary bonus. And it’s no surprise then that two of the biggest beasts in the backbench Tory jungle are set to battle it out to replace Tugendhat. Less than a day after the former army officer’s appointment to the cabinet, two names are already doing the rounds in the fleshpots of Westminster: Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, and Liam Fox, the onetime Defence Secretary. Both men are expected to shortly announce their intentions to stand.
Sir Iain will likely trade on his record with China, for which he earned the enmity of Beijing and was sanctioned by the country early last year for calling out the Uyghur genocide. The former Scots Guards’ lieutenant rejection of Truss’s offer of leadership of the House of Commons in order to run for the post will likely play well with those Labour MPs whose votes will be necessary to secure the cross-party role. Sir Iain will also have some Labour allies via his work on the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), which is co-chaired by Labour peer Baroness Kennedy.
Liam Fox meanwhile is a fellow member of IPAC and has experience of the Foreign Office on both sides of the Commons. He served as a junior minister in the department under John Major and shadowed the post under Michael Howard. A staunch Brexiteer, like Duncan Smith, he was Theresa May’s International Trade Secretary for three years and more recently has maintained his penchant for globe-trotting, according to returns in the register of members’ interests. Foreign affairs is a longtime interest for Fox: his book Rising Tides presciently warned in 2013 that many of the world’s institutions are ill-equipped for the 21st century.
While both men have the pedigree, both are seen as on the right or centre right of their party. The exclusion of ministers from voting usually means that the Opposition picks the most acceptable (i.e left wing) Tory or the one most likely to cause the incumbent leadership problems (e.g Tom Tugendhat or Tobias Ellwood). Other names in contention include Alicia Kearns, who memorably eviscerated Sir Philip Barton, the flailing Foreign Office permanent secretary, at an inquest into the Afghanistan evacuation. She ran the China Research Group with Tugendhat but could be in line for a junior post under Truss.
One thing’s for sure, with so many Rishi supporters dumped to the backbenches, there certainly won’t be enough jobs to go around…
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