A Pessimist's Guide to the New Tory Cabinet

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

For the first time in 20 years, Britain finds itself with a Conservative majority government. David Cameron hasn't wasted any time, live tweeting the appointment of his new cabinet this weekend. Yesterday we had the final announcements, so we thought we'd give you the low down on who will be running the country, given it seems to change as often as the Sugababes line up.

Overall the cabinet is lurching rightwards, in an attempt to appease the Tory activists and backbenchers who feel their right-wing agenda was constrained by the bleeding-heart liberals in the previous coalition.

Here are some of our new overlords:

Liz Truss remains Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, where she can continue her vital work regarding British cheese for British workers.

George Osborne will carry on as Chancellor, and will be entrusted to implement this "long term economic plan." He must have learnt about the importance of not wasting taxpayers' money back in 2005, when he claimed back £47 in expenses, after purchasing two copies of a DVD of his own speech on—you guessed it—the" value for taxpayers' money." He'll be the guy tasked with steaming ahead with austerity, the economic sense of which is as poor as a 20-year-old trying to rent without housing benefit.

Sajid Javid has taken over as business secretary. A former banker, he reportedly took a 98 percent pay cut to work in politics. Would you trust a guy who took a 98 percent pay cut to take care of business? Think about it.

Priti Patel has ended up as Minister of State for Employment, which is going to go down well with the British workforce, who she labeled "lazy" back in 2012. She called British workers "the worst idlers in the world" in her book Britannia Unchained and now I guess she's going to whip us into shape.

Theresa May keeps her post in the new cabinet, having been Home Secretary since 2010. She plans on reviving the "Snoopers Charter," a move that had been blocked under the coalition by the Lib Dems, which will require mobile phone and internet companies to keep records of your emails, calls, browsing, texts, and social media use for a year, so you better think of some new slang to use in your texts when you're picking up.

It seems only fair that the person who presided over the "racist van" fiasco and talked a load of shit about an illegal immigrant dodging deportation because he had a cat gets another crack at placating UKIP voters.

She'll also have to decide whether to let cops use Boris Johnson's shiny new water canon to police protests. So far she's resisted it. I can't wait to see if she holds out when there's a new wave of popular unrest against five more years of austerity.

Michael Gove will be taking over as Justice Secretary having pissed all the teachers off in his last stint as Education Minister. It's a pretty tough gig for a bloke that can't even work out how a smart-watch works—earlier this year Beyoncé started playing from his wrist during a cabinet meeting.

But what does Gove believe in? He has previously said he'd like to see the death penalty introduced in the UK out of "respect for democracy." He went on to write in a column for the Times that, the state not dishing out capital punishment has led to "the erosion of all our freedoms and has made the punishment of the innocent more likely." It's just a bit of a drag that the Conservative fear for the erosion of our liberty doesn't extend to keeping the Human Rights Act. Gove has been entrusted to oversee the UK leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. Overcoming this particular bout of political correctness gone mad puts the UK alongside Belarus and Kazakhstan as the only European countries not signed up for the whole "human rights" thing.

Oh, and the bloke in charge of dishing out justice doesn't think we need an enquiry into alleged Westminster pedophile rings.

Phillip Hammond is staying put, continuing in his post as Foreign Secretary, his homophobia presumably helping grease the wheels of diplomacy with the likes of Vladimir Putin and the king of Saudi Arabia.

Boris Johnson is now an MP, and will attend cabinet meetings, but he won't have any specific responsibilities until his time as Mayor of London finishes up next year. I guess until that point he'll keep his colleagues amused with his Classical rhetorical flourishes, which will surely earn him his salary as an MP on top of the £144,000 [$225,000] he gets for being Mayor.

He's been worried for years now that there are "benefits cheats who pretend to be ill for money," and he'd know all about inaccuracy on forms, once being exposed for having an "inaccurate and misleading" CV. Iain Duncan Smith will carry on " offering new hope" to people at the Department for Work and Pensions. You know, the "I hope I can eat this month" that comes when a family learns its benefits have been capped at below the equivalent of the minimum wage. The "I hope I don't get evicted from my home this week" that the Bedroom Tax has provided. With a further £12 billion [$18 billion] in cuts to be made to the welfare bill, that's a whole lot of hope that IDS needs to be dishing out.

Nicky Morgan will carry on as Minister for Women and Equalities, which is a bit weird, considering she voted against the introduction of same-sex marriage back in 2013. She's got a good explanation for this one though, she reckons that she'd have voted differently had the "supporters of same-sex marriage been more vocal about their position." Yeah, the shy and retiring LGBT community.

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Morgan will also continue as Secretary of State for Education, because apparently equality is just a part-time gig. Speaking of having enough time to do a job properly, back in February, over 44,000 teachers from across the UK got in touch with the Department for Education, after Morgan told them to let her know if they had any problems with their workload.

Michael Fallon will continue at the helm of the Ministry of Defense, and he's got a tough time ahead. Whilst the Tory party faithful are said to be pushing hard for the Tories to follow the lead of UKIP in committing 2 percent of GDP to defense, NATO's target, he's expected to have to make further savings from within the MOD as budgets are slashed.

At least he's got a proven record when it comes to defense; defending himself for dodgy expenses claims, defending himself after proudly voting against "gay marriage," and defending himself after allegedly calling author and columnist Bryony Gordon a "slut" at a party.

Amber Rudd will take on the Energy and Climate Change brief. Green campaigners seem pleased that this job has gone to one of the very few Conservative MPs who think that climate change is a real issue. Let's hope she can talk some of her mates round.

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