Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a Cabinet reshuffle in the UK. During shuffle came as a head-turner for foreign secretary Dominic Raab who was demoted among big names. Raab has been replaced by Liz Truss as the foreign secretary, who was at the United Nations General Assembly last week.
Raab is now being demoted to Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister. Gavin Williamson, who faced intense criticism over his handling of disruption to schools and exams during the pandemic, was one of the first ministers to be sacked from his post as education secretary. He was replaced by former vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi.
Robert Jenrick also lost his post as the housing secretary. He was replaced by the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government by Michael Gove. The Asian community rejoiced as Home Secretary Priti Patel, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, and Health Secretary Sajid Javid retained their respective positions.
Oliver Dowden replaced Amanda Milling, the former Conservative Party co-chair. Nadine Dorries took over as the culture minister and Cop26 President Alok Sharma saw no change in his candidature. According to data from Conservative Home, Mr Williamson was the least popular member of the cabinet with Conservative Party members Liz Truss who has been promoted to foreign secretary from international trade secretary was the most popular.
The BBC reported that as for the education of those now in the cabinet, about 63% of them went to private schools down slightly when compared to Mr Johnson's previous ratio for last year, but still a stark contrast to his predecessors, just 30% of Theresa May’s first cabinet in 2016 attended independent schools, which was fewer than both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's original cabinet.
Johnson's new cabinet has 43% members who were educated at Oxford or Cambridge. A total of seven members belong to the beam community. The Cabinet now has eight women.
