Sajid Javid has been appointed chancellor of the exchequer, as Boris Johnson begins to build his administration after sacking more than half of Theresa May’s cabinet within hours of arriving in Downing Street.
Javid’s role will be critical, with the new prime minister promising to boost spending in a series of areas, including education, infrastructure and social care, and ramp up preparations for a no-deal Brexit.
The post of chancellor had been widely coveted, with Johnson’s campaign lieutenant Liz Truss regarded as one possible candidate, as well as Matt Hancock, who ditched his own leadership campaign after the first round of voting and threw his lot in with Johnson.
Javid’s is one of a handful of key appointments announced on Wednesday. The new home secretary will be Vote Leave loyalist Priti Patel, who returns to the cabinet after being sacked by May for holding private meetings in Israel without informing officials.
Dominic Raab, another Vote Leave veteran, will be the new foreign secretary, after Johnson’s rival for the Tory leadership, Jeremy Hunt, resigned rather than accept a demotion to the job of defence secretary.
Quick Guide10 Boris Johnson leadership campaign pledges - and their costs
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1: Raising the 40% income tax threshold
Cost: £9bn. Only 12% of people in the UK earn more than £50,000 a year, so this pledge to move the 40% threshold up to £80,000 would help those on the highest incomes.
2. Increasing the starting point for national insurance contributions to £12,500
Cost: £11bn. At present people pay NICs when they earn £166 a week and income tax when they earn £12,500 a year. Johnson wants to gradually align the two systems by raising the NICs ceiling to an annual £12,500.
3. Raise education spending
Cost: £4.6bn. Theresa May’s successor says he will raise education spending to £5,000 for every secondary school pupil and £4,000 for each primary school pupil.
4. More police
Cost: £1.1bn. Johnson has promised an extra 20,000 officers.
5. Free TV licences for the over-75s
Cost: £250m. This would reverse the BBC - and George Osborne's -decisions over this perk for pensioners.
6. Raising the level at which stamp duty is levied
Cost: £3.8bn. There have been reports that the incoming prime minister would like all house sales under £500,000 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to be exempt from stamp duty.
7. Nationwide full fibre broadband coverage by 2025
Cost: unknown. Industry experts say this is not feasible in the time available, given coverage is currently less than 10%.
8. The creation of six free ports in the UK
Cost: unknown. Johnson said while on the hustings with Jeremy Hunt that he intended to create “about six” free ports – zones designated by the government to pay little or no tax in an attempt to boost economic activity.
9. Review HS2 and build HS3
Cost: unknown. One of Johnson’s big early decisions will be whether to scrap HS2 and spend the money on alternative rail infrastructure such as linking the big cities of the north through HS3. Any savings generated by scrapping HS2 will almost certainly be recycled into other transport projects.
10. Raising the national living wage
Cost: unknown. The government employs one in six of the people working in the UK, so it would be affected by Johnson’s promise to raise the national living wage.
Larry Elliott Economics editor
Raab is the rightwing former chief of staff for David Davis, who resigned from May’s cabinet after a short-lived stint as Brexit secretary.
He has also been handed the title of “first secretary of state” – the formal designation Damian Green held, while he was Theresa May’s de facto deputy.
Johnson’s allies had promised a “cabinet for modern Britain”, but Javid takes his inspiration from former Tory leader Margaret Thatcher, whose portrait adorns his office, while Patel was a supporter of the death penalty as recently as 2011.
Raab made headlines during his leadership campaign by saying he wouldn’t call himself a feminist.
Johnson began announcing appointments after returning to Downing Street from his House of Commons office, where he had summoned a series of cabinet ministers in order to sack them.
The presence of several prominent Vote Leave campaigners at the highest level follows the appointment of its controversial chief executive Dominic Cummings as a senior Downing Street adviser.
It appeared to signal Johnson’s determination to assemble an ideologically coherent top team, rather than placating fretful remainers – despite his promise of uniting the party.
Hancock, speaking for the Johnson camp on Wednesday morning, said “uniting the party, and through that then uniting the country, is a really important part of what Boris is talking about”.