Friday briefing: Grant Shapps is the UK’s new defence secretary – but is he up to the job?

In today’s newsletter: The former energy secretary starts his fifth cabinet post in the past year, but questions remain about his military nous

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Good morning. The UK awakes today with a new defence secretary and yet another cabinet job for Grant Shapps – his fifth in the space of a year.

Shapps began last September as Boris Johnson’s transport secretary, spent a week as Liz Truss’s home secretary, replaced Jacob Rees-Mogg as business secretary after Rishi Sunak became prime minister, and then in February was demoted to energy secretary. Now he is in charge of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) at a moment when – as his predecessor Ben Wallace said in his resignation letter – the world will only get “more insecure and more unstable”.