Insiders from Foreign Secretary Liz Truss' Tory leadership campaign have revealed the likely shape of her first cabinet.
The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Truss and her supporters gathered last weekend at Chevening House, the semi-official country residence of foreign secretaries in Kent, to decide what cabinet jobs they would get if — as widely predicted — she wins the Tory leadership race.
Sources in her campaign team told the paper that they were not taking victory over former chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak for granted. "There is no complacency, we are not assuming anything," one said.
But with Truss leading by a two-to-one ratio over Sunak in recent polls of Conservative Party member, they tipped her supporters for key jobs in the new cabinet once the winner of the leadership contest — who will succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister — is announced on September 5.
After PM, the other three 'great offices of state' will go to her big-name backers.
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is expected to by promoted to chancellor, Attorney General Suella Braverman to Home Secretary and Education Secretary James Cleverly to foreign secretary.
That would give the Tories another opportunity for diversity point-scoring against the opposition Labour party, as it would be the first time all three jobs were held by the children of immigrants from Africa.
Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey is tipped to be made cabinet office minister, the job held until recently by a Sunak supporter Michael Gove until he was sacked by Johnson.
Cutting the Crap?
Truss reportedly told supporters she would "prioritise, prioritise, prioritise" and “strip away the crap," with one insider saying: "She will focus on doing fewer things and doing them better."
FT Whitehall editor Sebastian Payne tweeted that Kemi Badenoch, one of the runners-up in the Conservative MPs ballot of candidates and the one-time favourite among grassroots Tories, would have an yet-to-be-revealed seat at the cabinet table.
Brexit Opportunities Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg would also have a "senior role", Payne said, but not Gove's other job as levelling-up minister. And he said former party leader Iain Duncan Smith would make a return from the back benches for the first time since 2016.
Payne also tipped another former leadership hopeful, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat, for a cabinet post.
Like Truss, Tugendhat is one of the loudest voices for sending arms and even recruits to the Ukraine for its conflict with Russia and confrontation with China over Taiwan.
But unlike the foreign secretary, he has pro-European Union position since the majority of voters backed the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum. His inclusion in government may be a tactic to secure support from the Europhile wing of the party that helped oust Johnson from the top job in July.