Truss makes Shapps UK Home Secretary, taking enemy into cabinet

Shapps, 54, is one of the more senior figures in the governing Conservative Party and served as transport minister under Boris Johnson. He wasn’t offered a job in Truss’s cabinet initially because he hadn’t backed her during last summer’s Tory leadership contest. 

At the party conference earlier this month, Shapps was openly working against the prime minister. 

Liz Truss fired Home Secretary Suella Braverman for what was described as a national security breach, a dramatic move that heaps even more pressure on Britain’s premier as she clings to power.

Braverman shared secret documents on a personal mobile phone, four officials familiar with the matter said. In a letter to Truss posted on Twitter, she said she had sent an official document from her personal email, the contents of which she said had already been briefed to MPs.

That is regarded as serious, though not normally a firing offense. But political context is key, as Truss battles to keep her premiership from imploding.

According to a person familiar with the matter, Braverman was on a list of Cabinet ministers Truss’s advisers worried were preparing to resign to try to force the premier out after a disastrous six weeks in office. The others are Education Secretary Kit Malthouse and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, the person said. Both told Bloomberg News they are not quitting.

Yet the fears among Truss’s team illustrate just how far the prime minister’s authority has disintegrated in her mutinous Conservative Party. Compounding the sense of desperation, Truss moved quickly to replace Braverman with Grant Shapps — who has himself been openly plotting with Tory MPs to remove the prime minister. That bears all the hallmarks of a premier not in control.