The United Kingdom now has had three prime ministers in fewer than 50 days.
The country might receive a tad more clarity with Rishi Sunak's election to the office of Prime Minister. Sunak was the former Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Johnson's government seems quite a long time ago now, although it officially ended only on Sept. 6.
The financial market likes Sunak, who has a grasp of economics and has worked for Goldman Sachs and hedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund Management, which I am pretty sure I have come across before in relation to hotel ownership.
The pound sterling has gained a little strength since Sunak was named prime minister.
Sunak might well turn out to be a good prime minister, but it often has struck me as odd that politicians in the U.K. can rise to a position where they control, say finance or defense, with nothing in their past suggesting they know the slightest thing about the huge subject they now have full control over.
Different governmental systems pick their top people in different ways, and they operate in different environments, but in the U.K., the system is that a secretary of state must be already elected as a Member of Parliament and then be picked by the prime minister to be a secretary of state.
As prime ministers fail or need to change tack, then so these secretaries either rise or fall.
That is politics, I assume, but if anyone — business owners, financiers, investors, anyone — merely wishes to get on with things, it all starts at the top.
Since July 13, 2016, when Theresa May became prime minister, the top positions in the U.K. largely have been occupied by the same old faces.
The Conservative Party has formed the government since 2010 when David Cameron defeated the then Labour Party prime minister Gordon Brown. It has, obviously, had five prime ministers in that dozen or so years.
Look at the evidence at the ministries deemed the most important:
Prime Minister
· Boris Johnson; Liz Truss; Rishi Sunak
Deputy Prime Minister
· Dominic Raab (twice)
Home
· Sajid Javid; Suella Braverman (twice); Grant Shapps
Foreign
· Boris Johnson; Jeremy Hunt; Dominic Raab; Liz Truss
Chancellor of the Exchequer
· Sajid David; Rishi Sunak; Kwasi Kwarteng; Jeremy Hunt
Business
· Greg Clark; Kwasi Kwarteng; Grant Shapps
Levelling Up
· Greg Clark (twice); Sajid David; Michael Gove (twice)
There have been a few secretaries in these offices since May’s premiership that have not moved from one office to a second one. But all the above members of Parliament have gone around the roundabout on several occasions, some of them even coming back to an office they were, presumably, thought at one time not to be good enough to continue in.
Only one politician has survived in the same office under the last three prime ministers.
Stand up, Ben Wallace, secretary of defense, who I can only assume is the only one who knows where all the bodies are buried.
Braverman, Gove, Hunt, Javid, Raab and Shapps have all put their names in the hat during one of the leadership elections since May resigned.
There is criticism that so much upheaval has happened in such a short space of time and perhaps the decision as to who continues should be made by the electorate in a general election.
If I was the ruling prime minister, I would not want that to happen either. So it is no surprise the Conservative Party moved very quickly to select Sunak as leader. Sunak in turn acted swiftly to announce a cabinet he believed spans the party and its different streams of thought.
Sunak said the new cabinet is one of clarity and cohesiveness, but criticism leveled at him suggests it is yet another hodgepodge of disassociation that will unfurl at the first disagreement or scandal.
There are so many items the new government needs to take a firm grip of, such as inflation, energy prices, the debt in the public purse, the continued stream of refugees risking their lives in small boats crossing the English Channel and the degradation of personal wealth.
Business rises and falls on all these things.
There is much work to do.
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