For­mer British Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron made an un­ex­pect­ed re­turn to high of­fice on Mon­day, be­com­ing for­eign sec­re­tary in a ma­jor shake­up of the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment that al­so saw the fir­ing of di­vi­sive Home Sec­re­tary Suel­la Braver­man.

Prime Min­is­ter Rishi Sunak ap­point­ed Cameron, who led the U.K. gov­ern­ment be­tween 2010 and 2016 and trig­gered the coun­try’s ex­it from the Eu­ro­pean Union, as part of a Cab­i­net shuf­fle in which he al­so sacked Braver­man and named James Clev­er­ly, who had been for­eign sec­re­tary, to re­place her.

Braver­man, a law-and-or­der hard­lin­er, drew anger for ac­cus­ing po­lice of be­ing too le­nient with pro-Pales­tin­ian pro­test­ers. Sunak made ad­di­tion­al changes to the gov­ern­ment through­out the day, nam­ing Vic­to­ria Atkins as the new health sec­re­tary and mov­ing her pre­de­ces­sor, Steve Bar­clay, to the en­vi­ron­ment port­fo­lio.

The bold changes are an at­tempt by Sunak to re­set his fal­ter­ing gov­ern­ment. The Con­ser­v­a­tives have been in pow­er for 13 years, but opin­ion polls for months have put them 15 to 20 points be­hind the op­po­si­tion Labour Par­ty amid a stag­nat­ing econ­o­my, per­sis­tent­ly high in­fla­tion, an over­stretched health care sys­tem and a wave of pub­lic sec­tor strikes.

Cameron’s ap­point­ment came as a sur­prise to sea­soned pol­i­tics-watch­ers. It’s rare for a non-law­mak­er to take a se­nior gov­ern­ment post, and it has been decades since a for­mer prime min­is­ter held a Cab­i­net job.

The gov­ern­ment said Cameron had been ap­point­ed to Par­lia­ment’s un­elect­ed up­per cham­ber, the House of Lords. The last for­eign sec­re­tary to serve in the Lords, rather than the elect­ed House of Com­mons, was Pe­ter Car­ring­ton, who was part of Prime Min­is­ter Mar­garet Thatch­er’s gov­ern­ment in the 1980s.

Cameron, 57, said Britain was “fac­ing a daunt­ing set of in­ter­na­tion­al chal­lenges, in­clud­ing the war in Ukraine and the cri­sis in the Mid­dle East.”

“While I have been out of front-line pol­i­tics for the last sev­en years, I hope that my ex­pe­ri­ence — as Con­ser­v­a­tive leader for 11 years and prime min­is­ter for six — will as­sist me in help­ing the prime min­is­ter to meet these vi­tal chal­lenges,” he said in a state­ment.

Cameron’s for­eign pol­i­cy lega­cy is mixed. As prime min­is­ter, he backed NA­TO-led mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion in Libya in 2011 that top­pled Moam­mar Gad­hafi and deep­ened that coun­try’s chaos. In 2013, he tried and failed to gain Par­lia­ment’s back­ing for U.K. airstrikes against Pres­i­dent Bashar al-As­sad’s forces in Syr­ia. He al­so an­nounced a short-lived “gold­en era” in U.K.-Chi­na re­la­tions short­ly be­fore that re­la­tion­ship soured.

And he will be for­ev­er re­mem­bered as the un­wit­ting au­thor of Brex­it, a rup­ture that roiled Britain’s pol­i­tics, econ­o­my and place in the world. Cameron called a 2016 EU mem­ber­ship ref­er­en­dum, con­fi­dent the coun­try would vote to stay in the bloc. He re­signed the day af­ter vot­ers opt­ed to leave.

Bron­wen Mad­dox, di­rec­tor of in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs think-tank Chatham House, said Cameron “will bring un­doubt­ed strengths in­to the top team and to the U.K.’s re­la­tion­ships abroad,” where many will wel­come “a heavy­weight and mod­er­ate for­eign sec­re­tary.”

“The con­cern must be, how­ev­er, that these could be out­weighed by the con­tro­ver­sial lega­cy he brings too,” she said.

Sunak was a strong backer of the win­ning “leave” side in the ref­er­en­dum. But his de­ci­sion to ap­point Cameron and dis­miss Braver­man is like­ly to in­fu­ri­ate the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty’s right wing and in­flame ten­sions in the par­ty that Sunak has sought to soothe.

Promi­nent right-wing law­mak­er Ja­cob Rees-Mogg said sack­ing Braver­man was “a mis­take, be­cause Suel­la un­der­stood what the British vot­er thought and was try­ing to do some­thing about it.”

Sunak had been un­der grow­ing pres­sure to fire Braver­man — a hard-lin­er pop­u­lar with the par­ty’s au­thor­i­tar­i­an wing — from one of the most se­nior jobs in gov­ern­ment, re­spon­si­ble for han­dling im­mi­gra­tion and polic­ing.

In a high­ly un­usu­al at­tack on the po­lice last week, Braver­man said Lon­don’s po­lice force was ig­nor­ing law­break­ing by “pro-Pales­tin­ian mobs.” She de­scribed demon­stra­tors call­ing for a cease-fire in Gaza as “hate marchers.”

On Sat­ur­day, far-right pro­test­ers scuf­fled with po­lice and tried to con­front a large pro-Pales­tin­ian march by hun­dreds of thou­sands through the streets of Lon­don. Crit­ics ac­cused Braver­man of help­ing to in­flame ten­sions.

Last week, Braver­man wrote an ar­ti­cle for the Times of Lon­don in which she said po­lice “play fa­vorites when it comes to pro­test­ers” and act­ed more le­nient­ly to­ward pro-Pales­tin­ian demon­stra­tors and Black Lives Mat­ter sup­port­ers than to­ward right-wing pro­test­ers or soc­cer hooli­gans.

The ar­ti­cle was not ap­proved in ad­vance by the prime min­is­ter’s of­fice, as would usu­al­ly be the case.

Braver­man said Mon­day that “it has been the great­est priv­i­lege of my life to serve as home sec­re­tary,” adding that she would “have more to say in due course.”

Braver­man, a 43-year-old lawyer, has be­come a leader of the par­ty’s pop­ulist wing by ad­vo­cat­ing ever-tougher curbs on mi­gra­tion and a war on hu­man rights pro­tec­tions, lib­er­al so­cial val­ues and what she has called the “to­fu-eat­ing wokerati.” Last month she called mi­gra­tion a “hur­ri­cane” that would bring “mil­lions more im­mi­grants to these shores, un­con­trolled and un­man­age­able.”

As home sec­re­tary, Braver­man cham­pi­oned the gov­ern­ment’s stalled plan to send asy­lum-seek­ers who ar­rive in Britain in boats on a one-way trip to Rwan­da. A U.K. Supreme Court rul­ing on whether the pol­i­cy is le­gal is due on Wednes­day.

Crit­ics say Braver­man has been build­ing her pro­file to po­si­tion her­self for a par­ty lead­er­ship con­test that could come if the Con­ser­v­a­tives lose pow­er in an elec­tion ex­pect­ed next year.

Last month Sunak tried to paint his gov­ern­ment as a force of change, say­ing he would break a “30-year sta­tus quo” that in­cludes the gov­ern­ments of Cameron and oth­er Con­ser­v­a­tive pre­de­ces­sors.

“A few weeks ago, Rishi Sunak said David Cameron was part of a failed sta­tus quo. Now he’s bring­ing him back as his life raft,” said Labour law­mak­er Pat Mc­Fad­den.

As well as bring­ing about Brex­it, Cameron’s gov­ern­ment im­posed years of pub­lic-spend­ing cuts af­ter the 2008 glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis that have frayed the coun­try’s wel­fare sys­tem and state-fund­ed health ser­vice. Af­ter leav­ing of­fice he was caught up in a scan­dal over his lob­by­ing for Green­sill Cap­i­tal, a fi­nan­cial ser­vices firm that lat­er col­lapsed.

Tim Bale, a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics at Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, said Cameron’s ap­point­ment was a sign of the gov­ern­ment’s “des­per­a­tion.”

“It’s dif­fi­cult to be­lieve that this is go­ing to im­press vot­ers, whether they are con­vinced Brex­i­teers who de­spise David Cameron for be­ing a re­main­er or con­vinced re­main­ers who de­spise David Cameron for hold­ing and los­ing a ref­er­en­dum,” Bale said.