Greg Hands replaces Nadhim Zahawi as Tory chairman: Rishi Sunak installs Tesco Meal Deal-loving multi-lingual Remainer who mocked Boris Johnson for fleeing to Kabul to miss Heathrow runway vote
- Mr Sunak is believed to have struggled to find someone willing to fill the role
- Hands is a father-of-two who speaks five languages including Czech and German
- Served as a minister under every prime minister since David Cameron in 2015
Rishi Sunak unveiled a Boris Johnson critic and Remainer as Tory chairman today as he finally replaced Nadhim Zahawi.
Greg Hands moved from being Trade Policy Minister to take up the role, more than a week after Zahawi was sacked over his family tax affairs.
Mr Sunak is believed to have struggled to find someone willing to fill the role, and his choice of Mr Hands in a role linking the Government with the party faithful may raise some eyebrows.
The father-of-two, 57, who speaks five languages including Czech and German, has been an MP in London since 2005 and has served as a minister under every prime minister since David Cameron.
But he was also a leader of the Remain campaign in the capital in 2016. More recently he also clashed with Boris Johnson over the proposed third runway at Heathrow.
Hands resigned as a minister in 2018 in order to oppose the air hub expansion in a Commons vote, while Mr Johnson, then foreign secretary and a fellow opponent of the plan, flew to Afghanistan in order to avoid the vote and having to resign.
At the time Mr Hands, a Plymouth Argyle fan who had been on a pilgrimage at a Romanian monastery, used Twitter to mock Mr Johnson. ‘Great to arrive back in the UK at Luton Airport in time for the match today and to vote against Heathrow expansion tomorrow,’ he wrote. ‘I wouldn’t want to be abroad for either of those. #commitments.’
Mr Sunak has also launched a dramatic reshaping of Whitehall, with Grant Shapps’ Business Department being merged with Trade – and Kemi Badenoch taking charge.
Greg Hands moved from being Trade Policy Minister to take up the role, more than a week after Zahawi was sacked over his family tax affairs.
He is also noted for some off-piste tweets, including one praising Tesco for freezing the cost of its Meal Deal for five years.
His wife, Irina Hundt, is German (couple pictured in 2005) and in 2018 he revealed the impact of the Brexit vote on his family.
Mr Shapps will be shifted to a new Energy Security department. There will be a new ministry of ‘Science, Innovation and Technology’, including responsibilities for digital issues currently held by the Culture Department. That will be headed by Michelle Donelan.
Along with Mr Hands, the Lucy Frazer joins the Cabinet in Ms Donelan’s old Culture brief.
The reshuffle is not likely to affect the future of Deputy PM Dominic Raab, who faces an inquiry into bullying claims.
However, gloomy Tories have been expressing bewilderment at the ‘bizarre’ decision to attempt a major revamp of the ‘back end’ of government barely a year before the likely election date.
One branded it ‘deckchair day’, a reference to the saying about shifting chairs on the Titanic as it sank.
Mr Hands was born in New York and raised in the US until he was seven. His family then moved back to the UK. He maintains dual UK-US nationality.
He was educated at state schools but his Tory biography says his family ‘was constantly on the move, due to the Labour Government of 1974-1979 closing down grammar schools’.
He spent a gap year in West Berlin, working in a McDonalds and a swimming pool before heading to Cambridge. A first in modern history was followed by eight years as a banker and time spent as a councillor in Hammersmith and Fulham.
He took the Hammersmith and Fulham parliamentary constituency from Labour in 2005 with a majority of more than 5,000. The seat was abolished in the 2010 election, when he won the new Chelsea and Fulham constituency.
He was a shadow Treasury minister in opposition and rose to become a whip and then Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Cameron in 2015. Theresa May moved him to trade the following year after becoming PM, but he resigned in 2018 over Heathrow. Since then he has been a trade minister under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Mr Sunak.
He also ran the London mayoral campaign of Shaun Bailey, who was defeated comfortably by Sadiq Khan in 2021.
He is also noted for some off-piste tweets, including one praising Tesco for freezing the cost of its Meal Deal for five years.
His wife, Irina Hundt, is German and in 2018 he revealed the impact of the Brexit vote on his family.
‘My wife is German, my children are bilingual, and on the day of the referendum, or the day after, my son – who at the time was nine years old – cried over the result,’ he told HuffPost.
‘He didn’t really understand it. He may have thought that his mother and father would now be forced to separate.’
More recently he showed his loyalty to Mr Sunak when his wife, Akshata Murty, came under pressure over her non-dom tax status. He suggested that there could be a racial element to the criticism, telling the BBC: ‘Some of the commentary about her being a foreign national has been unpleasant.’
More recently he has attracted the ire of China over a trade visit to Taiwan.
Beijing said the UK must ‘stop sending the wrong signals’ after he visited Taipei in November, becoming the latest foreign official to defy Beijing’s warnings over contacts with the island.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory and threatens to annex it by force. It also seeks to isolate it diplomatically, requiring governments that it has formal relations with to respect its ‘one-China’ principle.
The U.K. should ‘earnestly respect China’s sovereignty, uphold the one-China principle, stop any forms of official contacts with Taiwan and stop sending wrong signals to Taiwan independence separatist forces,’ Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing.
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