Rishi Sunak has not been elected in a general election. He came second in a party leadership contest after Liz Truss who was the party’s first choice for PM. Sunak only got a shot at PM when Liz Truss proved to be astoundingly incompetent. Thus his position holds little mandate and is reasonably undemocratic. This is even more true with the very recent appointment by Sunak of bringing back David Cameron. Cameron holds even less democratic mandate than Sunak, since he is not even a member of the House of Commons, he is a peer. This means he is unaccountable to a constituency and given his appointed nature, it can be argued that it is undemocratic that he should hold such authority as foreign secretary.
However, I do believe that he has been a good appointment, (and so has Sunak) since he has huge personal experience, drawn from six years as prime minister, and eleven as leader of the Conservatives. Given that the Conservative party were voted in in the last general election in 2019, any choices made by the Conservatives such as the appointment of Cameron have therefore indirectly been voted by the electorate in 2019, and thus the Conservatives still hold a reasonable mandate. As well as this, Sunak is already proving his mettle, given that he has achieved his goal of halving inflation already, down now to 4.6%, which is a great achievement. Similarly Cameron, within days of taking office, has now already gone off to meet and discuss policy with Zelensky in Ukraine. Therefore Sunak and Cameron do hold at least a reasonable democratic mandate, and I have good confidence in both individuals that they can and already are digging the UK out of a hole dug by Johnson, and deepened by Truss. But will it be enough to salvage the next general election?