Sunak’s reshuffle gamble to spur UK growth

AROUND 100 days into office, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak undertook a reshuffle last Tuesday (Feb 7) intended to recharge his government. Yet, it may amount to little more than “moving the deckchairs on the Titanic”.

Sunak’s reshuffle, the fifth in some 20 months by successive Conservative governments, didn’t actually move many Cabinet ministers. Rather it shifted existing members of the prime minister’s top team around in what is actually more of a reform of the government architecture.

This restructuring of the ministry landscape saw the former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) split three main ways. This is only the latest change for the department which, since its inception in 1861 as the-then Board of Trade, has undergone wide-ranging changes since the 1960s in various forms.