UK Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday named arch-euroskeptic Philip Hammond as his new foreign secretary, as he unveiled a major Cabinet reshuffle before next year’s general election.
Former British secretary for defence Hammond, whose appointment was confirmed on Cameron’s Twitter feed, supports Britain leaving the EU in a referendum in 2017 unless significant powers are returned to London.
The reshuffle is the biggest since Cameron’s Conservative-led coalition government took power in 2010 and marks a bid to widen his party’s appeal ahead of the election.
Photo: Reuters
He has promised a referendum on Britain leaving the EU in three years’ time if he remains prime minister beyond next year.
Newspapers billed the reshuffle as a cull of the “pale, male and stale,” which would open the door for a new wave of women to get ministerial jobs.
Cameron said Hague, who was leader of the center-right Tories between 1997 and 2001, had been “one of the leading lights of the Conservative Party for a generation.”
He was a leading voice calling for the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before the House of Commons last year voted down missile strikes on the country in a major foreign policy blow to Cameron.
His appointment followed Monday’s surprise resignation of William Hague, who in recent months had worked closely with Hollywood star Angelina Jolie on a high-profile campaign to end rape as a weapon of war and is expected to continue work in this field.
Hague will continue to serve as a minister with responsibility for managing business in the House of Commons until the general election, when he will step down as a lawmaker.
In a series of tweets confirming the news, Hague wrote: “From May 2015, after such a long period in politics I want to embark on many other things I have always wanted to do.”
“Renewal in politics is good, and holding office is not an end in itself. After 26 years as an MP time will be right for me to move on,” he said.
Hammond is seen as a safe pair of hands whose appointment to the Foreign Office would reassure euroskeptics.
“Hammond isn’t the kind of politician to set the heather alight,” political commentator James Forsyth wrote in a blog posting for the Spectator magazine.
“But the fact that someone who has said that they’d vote to leave if substantial powers were not returned to the UK in the renegotiation is now Foreign Secretary sends a clear message to the rest of the EU about the British position,” he said.
As well as Hague’s departure, about a dozen middle-aged, white male ministers are leaving Cameron’s government.
They are expected to be replaced by a string of younger women, many of whom were only elected in 2010, but whose stock has been rising.
An early sign of Cameron’s intentions was the announcement that Nicky Morgan would leave her role as minister for women and take over at the education ministry.
She replaces Michael Gove, whose tenure has been marked by frequent rows with teachers. He is taking over as the government’s chief whip, responsible for enforcing party discipline.
Liz Truss was also named as the new secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs.
Political commentator Janan Ganesh wrote in the Financial Times that the reshuffle was “meant to show female voters that the Conservative party is not a woman-free zone.”
Labour branded the reshuffle a “massacre of the moderates” and a retreat away from the EU.
“Britain’s foreign policy is now set to be led by a man who has talked about taking us out of the EU,” shadow Cabinet Office minister Michael Dugher said.
“This reshuffle shows how weak David Cameron is, running scared of his own right wing,” he said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.