Theresa May's decisive reshuffle draws line under Cameron era

Theresa May has drawn a decisive line under the David Cameron era with a sweeping reshuffle that saw several of his key ministers, including justice secretary, Michael Gove, sacked, and her own handpicked team rewarded with cabinet posts.

Conservative MPs, some of whom had seen the former home secretary as a continuity candidate who would build incrementally on the record of the Cameron governments, were stunned by the radical reboot.

May began the day in her Westminster office, holding a series of one-to-one meetings with ministers she had decided to replace, including Gove; education secretary Nicky Morgan; and culture secretary John Whittingdale. She later moved to Downing Street, where senior Conservatives came and went throughout the day to be told their fate.

In total, six of Cameron’s ministers, including former chancellor George Osborne, have been shown the door since Wednesday night. Big winners included Justine Greening, who will run a new beefed-up department for education, and Liz Truss, who takes Gove’s role as justice secretary.

May will travel to Scotland to meet first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, on Friday for her first official visit, and stress her determination to uphold the union between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom despite the decision to leave the EU – something Scottish voters rejected at the referendum.

There were several surprising appointments to May’s cabinet.She handed key roles to Brexiters demonstrating that she is determined to repair the rift in the party created by the hard-fought referendum campaign.

Andrea Leadsom, who paved the way for May’s premiership when she dropped out of the Conservative party leadership race earlier this week, will be the new secretary for environment, food and rural affairs.

Leadsom made clear during the leadership campaign that she would like the ban on foxhunting to be repealed, and once suggested the subsidies which are currently received by farmers from the European Union should be completely phased out.

Priti Patel, the former employment minister, takes over as secretary of state for international development, despite a history of being sceptical about foreign aid, and even calling for her new department to be abolished.

The new cabinet has a distinctly less privileged flavour, with Cameron’s party chairman, his close friend Lord Feldman, replaced with Patrick McLoughlin, who comes from a working-class background in Yorkshire. Greening went to a comprehensive school. Only about a fifth of the new team were privately educated, compared to almost half under Cameron.

McLoughlin has been tasked with the job of winning seats and gaining support in parts of the country that are not traditional Conservative strongholds, in a clear signal that May hopes to exploit Labour’s disarray by reaching out to working-class voters.

May’s allies insisted she was not motivated by a personal animus against the “chumocracy” of close friends and allies that surrounded Cameron and Osborne; but had ruthlessly favoured colleagues she believed could deliver.

The new prime minister also announced the most radical shake-up in the shape of Whitehall for years, with the Department for Energy and Climate Change to be abolished, and its responsibilities absorbed into a new department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Sajid Javid, who has been far more reluctant to use the phrase “industrial strategy” than his coalition predecessor, the Lib Dem Vince Cable, will move across to be communities secretary, while Greg Clark takes over at business.

Education will be beefed up under Greening, taking over responsibility for apprenticeships and higher education, currently overseen by the business department. Downing Street said that was so that children’s full journey, from the early years, to their first steps into the workplace, would be overseen by a single Whitehall department.

Despite Truss and Greening’s success, however, expectations that Britain’s second female prime minister would bring a decisive boost to the number of women in government were disappointed, with most roles still held by men.

Senior Conservatives came and went in Downing Street all day, to find out what job their new leader was prepared to offer them. There were rumours – which were believed to be true by senior officials at the Department of Health – that Jeremy Hunt would be sacked; but he was later confirmed in his post, tweeting, ‘“rumours of my death have been exaggerated”, and that he wasthrilled to be back “in the best job in government”.

One well-placed NHS official said: “We were told this morning [Thursday] that he was going. Everybody was hoping that he would move on and everyone was expecting that he would move on. But then we were stumped that he was being retained. People were genuinely surprised. Hunt staying was clearly not the plan”.

May’s office denied reports that Stephen Crabb was offered the health brief, before turning it down. Crabb, the work and pensions secretary who made his own run at the leadership but dropped out after the first round of voting, said he would be leaving the government for “personal reasons”. A source said he had “healing to do,” after it emerged the married MP had sent a series of salacious messages to a young woman.

May’s spokeswoman later said her appointments demonstrated that she would run a “bold” cabinet. “What we’re seeing is the commitment of the prime minister to putting social reform at the heart of her government,” she said.

Truss’s appointment in particular was a signal that criminal justice reform is a key priority for May, who had previously been regarded as a relatively hard-line home secretary, but has made a pitch for the centreground by stressing her commitment to reform, since standing for the leadership.

In her first handful of announcements, on Wednesday night, May placed the responsibility for negotiating Britain’s way out of the European Union squarely on the shoulders of the men who fought for it in the referendum campaign – David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson, who will be Brexit secretary, overseas trade secretary and foreign secretary respectively.

Between the hiring and firing on Thursday, May found 15 minutes to receive a congratulatory call from the US president, Barack Obama. The pair discussed the need to safeguard the “special relationship” between the two countries, and May stressed to him that she will honour the electorate’s decision at last month’s referendum to leave the EU.

Jon Ashworth MP, Labour’s shadow minister without portfolio, responding to the cabinet announcements, said: “We had warm words from the prime minister yesterday on the need for her government to stand up for more than just a privileged few.

“But Theresa May’s appointments are completely out of kilter with her words on the steps of Downing Street yesterday. It’s difficult to see this new-look cabinet as anything other than a sharp shift to the right by the Tories.”