Sunak reshuffle: Grant Shapps to replace Ben Wallace as defence secretary

Rishi Sunak has reshuffled his top team by appointing Grant Shapps as the new defence secretary to replace the outgoing Ben Wallace.

Shapps, who was the energy security secretary, will be taking up his fifth different position in cabinet in less than a year after serving as transport secretary, business secretary and, briefly, home secretary.

While some defence experts “bemoan his lack of military experience compared to his predecessor Ben Wallace, who served in the Scots Guards, others say Shapps may have some advantages on his side”, said the BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner. His three-year stint at the Department for Transport “will have given him some idea of logistics, a key factor in supporting any military operation”, Gardner added.

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But in a sign of a first potential flashpoint between Sunak and Shapps, The Telegraph’s political editor Ben Riley-Smith noted on Twitter, now X, that the former energy security secretary called last year for 3% GDP defence spending. But “Sunak has so far rejected those calls in office, only backing 2.5% in the long run”, said Riley-Smith.

Tweeting after his appointment, Shapps said he was “honoured”, and paid tribute to his predecessor’s “enormous contribution… to UK defence and global security”. In his own resignation letter, Wallace said that “the Ministry of Defence is back on the path to being once again world class”.

In what Politics Home’s political editor Adam Payne described as “a major promotion for one of the PM’s closest allies”, Claire Coutinho, the minister for children, has replaced Shapps as energy security secretary.

Both Shapps and Coutinho are Sunak “loyalists”, agreed Sky News’s deputy political editor Sam Coates. They had been chosen by the prime minister “not just perhaps because of their skills, but because they have stuck by Rishi Sunak”.

The mini-reshuffle is a signal that “after the first year – in which he focused on stabilising both markets and his party – [Sunak] is ready to change gear”, said Katy Balls in The Spectator.

“His political operation is set to become more election-ready and in sharpened attack mode,” she added.