The Biggest Legends in Boris Johnson's New Cabinet

Boris Johnson has "acted decisively" to create his cabinet, according to incoming chief secretary to the Treasury, Rishi Sunak, meaning: he has surrounded himself with people who backed him in the leadership race and sent anyone who didn't show sufficient support to the back-bench gulag.

Apparently it is a "cabinet for modern Britain", meaning we have a diverse cast of Brexit-ultras, turbo-Thatcherites and weird reactionaries ready to erode several decades of social progress.

Here's our pick of the most epic and legendary appointments.

Chancellor

The new chancellor comes with a raft of personal stories about being subjected to racist abuse as a child, but has also dropped the occasional race-baiting tweet when he thinks it'll help his career. His promotion to Chancellor is therefore both inspiring BAME representation and cancelled trash.

His promotion to one of the top jobs in British government comes just months after he was labelled a "moral coward" following the death of Shamima Begum's baby. In a bid to furnish his leadership credentials, the then-Home Secretary stripped the "IS teenager" of her citizenship, meaning she was stranded in a refugee camp in Syria, where her new-born baby died. Tragically, Javid did not become leader of the Conservative Party.

When he worked in the Treasury previously, Javid had a portrait of Thatcher on his wall, meaning we can likely all look forward to some fairly gratuitous sucking up to evil corporations.

Home Secretary

Priti Patel's appointment to high office comes less than two years after she was forced to resign a post in the foreign office for pursuing "freelance foreign policy" by holding undisclosed meetings in Israel. In normal times, letting someone like that back into government would be fairly frowned upon, but here we are.

Perhaps more significant is the new Home Secretary’s terrible record on human rights, having routinely voted against them. It’s almost as if the Windrush scandal never happened! A hang 'em and flog 'em type, she's not going to bring back the death penalty, but it wasn't long ago that she suggested it might not be such a bad idea.

Foreign Secretary

Raab should be fully signed up to Boris Johnson’s "can-do" bluster. He’s a hard-Brexit head banger who wants to use strong-man tactics against the EU and threaten to crash out on WTO terms.

Raab is also one of several new appointments to have co-authored Britannia Unchained, a book published in 2012 by the "new Tory right" – a cohort of young Conservative MPs. They wrote that the British are "among the worst idlers in the world".

"Too many people in Britain, we argue, prefer a lie-in to hard work," they said, as if that's a bad thing. Now, he gets to trash talk the average Brit as a lazy, worthless turd to foreign dignitaries.

Leader of the House of Commons

The arch-Brexiteer is now going to have to own whatever crap this government comes out with and can no longer whinge from the back-benches that this Brexit isn't Brexit-y enough.

Like Johnson, he has an affected posh schtick, which gives people licence to find him entertaining despite his ultra-conservative opinions, such as his opposition to abortion.

Environment

The new environment secretary has backed fracking.

Brexit Secretary

New Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay keeps talking up the preparations that are apparently being made for a no-deal Brexit. Fake it 'til you make it is a good mantra if you don't want to respond to a work email that you deem beneath you, but whether it's a good strategy for operating government remains to be seen.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

Michael Gove seems to have patched things up with Boris after he shafted him in the 2016 Conservative Party leadership race. The normal way for Tories to smooth things over is to give each other arcane heraldic titles, and so Gove becomes Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. This position basically lets him sit around the cabinet table without much of a portfolio – it’s a bit of a freebie with some arcane, feudal nonsense attached. The peasants of Lancaster will be watching Gove's attitude towards bringing back serfdom with great interest.

@SimonChilds13