James Cleverly gets new role as Kemi Badenoch reshuffles top team

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has made Sir James Cleverly her shadow housing secretary as part of a reshuffle of her senior team.

The new role will see the former foreign and home secretary go head-to-head with Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in Parliament.

Announcing Sir James’s return to the front bench, Badenoch said her party was “moving into a new phase” and she wanted to “make sure all our heavy hitters are on the bench”.

In other changes, Richard Holden has been appointed shadow transport secretary, with Julia Lopez taking over from Alan Mak as shadow science secretary.

In other moves confirmed by the party:

• Kevin Hollinrake becomes Conservative Party chair, replacing Nigel Huddleston, who moves to the culture brief
• Neil O’Brien is promoted to a new shadow cabinet role called shadow minister for policy renewal and development
• Stuart Andrew becomes shadow health secretary, replacing Edward Argar, who confirmed he would be standing down following a “health scare”

In a letter to Badenoch, Argar said he had “listened to what the doctors said to me… and have concluded that lightening my front bench workload over the coming months in order to complete my recovery and fully restore my health in that period, is the sensible approach”.

Posting his resignation letter on social media, Badenoch said: “I want to put on record my sincere thanks to Ed Argar for serving in my shadow cabinet.

“I wish him the very best for a speedy recovery and return to full health.”

Announcing his decision to step back from the shadow cabinet, Alan Mak said: “Despite the offer of an alternative role, I have decided to focus on constituency matters.”

Badenoch had been poised to make small changes to her frontbench team in order to replace the shadow ministers who wanted to step down for personal reasons.

However, the Tory leader opted for a bigger shake-up, making about half a dozen changes, although none of the 2024 intake of Conservative MPs have been given a promotion to the shadow cabinet.

John Glen, a Treasury minister in the previous Conservative government, has been made Badenoch’s parliamentary private secretary – a role which tasks the MP with becoming his leader’s ‘eyes and ears’ in Parliament.

Cameron-era cabinet minister Lord Francis Maude will join Badenoch’s team as an unpaid adviser, occasionally attending shadow cabinet and sitting on the party’s policy oversight committee.

Sir Mel Stride and Robert Jenrick will stay in their current respective roles of shadow chancellor and shadow justice secretary, along with Chris Philp as shadow home secretary, and Dame Priti Patel as shadow foreign secretary.

Speaking to broadcasters, Badenoch said the reshuffle was “an opportunity to bring back a very very talented colleague in James Cleverly, and I’m thrilled he is taking on the shadow housing and local government brief”.

“Its about bringing back experience. James is a former foreign and home secretary, former party chairman he has a lot more experience that anyone on Labour’s front bench.”

Sir James has been a backbench MP since being eliminated by just four votes from the Tory leadership election in October 2024, after which Badenoch went on to defeat her closest rival, the now-shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick.

During his leadership campaign, Sir James said his party needed to be “more normal” and recently warned the Conservatives against copying Reform UK’s policies.

He has expressed scepticism about the impact of leaving the European Convention of Human Rights, something that could put him at odds with Badenoch, who recently launched a review into whether the UK should withdraw from the treaty.

He received a knighthood in April 2025 as part of former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s resignation honours list.

The reshuffle comes eight months into Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservatives – a period which has seen the party regularly poll third or fourth, behind Labour, Reform UK and sometimes the Liberal Democrats.

In May, the Tories suffered a poor set of results in the local election, losing control of 16 councils.

In an interview with the BBC in June, Badenoch said she was “going to get better” as leader, adding: “You don’t want people to be the very best they’re going to be on day one.”

She added that the Conservatives had “hit rock bottom” at the last general election and that her efforts to change her party was “not going to happen overnight”.

Labour Party Chair Ellie Reeves said: “No amount of deckchair shuffling can hide that the architects of 14 years of Tory failure still sit around Kemi Badenoch’s top table”.

Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Olney said: “Kemi Badenoch has appointed the very man who said that replacing Liz Truss as prime minister would be a terrible idea.”

Referencing Sir James’s defence of Truss when he was serving in her government, she added: “it’s like appointing an iceberg apologist to a role steering the Titanic.”