logo
Sir James Cleverly to make frontbench comeback as Kemi Badenoch reshuffles team

Sir James Cleverly to make frontbench comeback as Kemi Badenoch reshuffles team

The Leader of the Opposition is expected to reshuffle her shadow cabinet on Tuesday.
A Conservative source said: 'The Leader of the Opposition will be making some changes to her frontbench team today.
'The changes reflect the next stage of the party's policy renewal programme and underline the unity of the party under new leadership.
'Sir James Cleverly is expected to return in a prominent frontbench role to take the fight to this dreadful Labour Government.'
Kemi Badenoch is expected to carry out a shadow Cabinet reshuffle (Chris Radburn/PA)
Sir James served as both foreign secretary and home secretary when the Conservatives were in power.
He stood as a candidate in last year's Conservative leadership election, but lost out on the Tory top job ahead of the final heat between Mrs Badenoch and her now-shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick.
Since the leadership contest, Sir James has returned to the Tory back benches as the MP for Braintree.
He has used his influential position as a former minister to warn against pursuing populist agenda akin to Nigel Farage's Reform UK.
Appearing at the Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank last week, the senior Tory hit out at calls to 'smash the system' and 'start again from scratch', branding them 'complete nonsense'.
He also appeared to take a different position on net zero from party leader Mrs Badenoch in a recent speech, urging the Conservatives to reject climate change 'luddites' on the right who believe 'the way things are now is just fine'.
A list of full changes to the Conservative frontbench team will be announced on Tuesday afternoon.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Truss ‘carries quite a lot of blame' for Tory record, Badenoch claims
Truss ‘carries quite a lot of blame' for Tory record, Badenoch claims

North Wales Chronicle

time34 minutes ago

  • North Wales Chronicle

Truss ‘carries quite a lot of blame' for Tory record, Badenoch claims

The current Tory leader said she was 'very focused on what the Conservatives are going to do now', after former prime minister Ms Truss accused her of 'repeating spurious narratives'. Speaking on a farm near Saffron Walden in her constituency, Mrs Badenoch also described herself as an 'Essex girl', and added that people from the county 'are grafters; they work hard'. The Leader of the Opposition faced questions about Ms Truss's claim that under the Conservatives, 'the economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by (Rishi) Sunak' and that 'the huge increase in immigration has been a disaster'. Mrs Badenoch told ITV Anglia: 'I know that, as a former prime minister and a former foreign secretary, (Ms Truss) carries quite a lot of that blame. 'The party's now under new leadership. 'I wasn't in charge during those 14 years; she was. 'That's a criticism she's probably levelling at herself.' The Tory leader also said she was 'telling the truth' about her party's record. 'I'm telling the truth that immigration was too high – that's why we have much tougher policies to fix immigration,' she continued. 'I am telling the truth that taxes were too high, that we were putting a lot of regulation on businesses, and what we're seeing is Labour making every single thing worse. 'They're doing that because they haven't learned many of the lessons that we learned. They haven't learned from our mistakes. They're making worse mistakes.' The Labour Government's mistakes include making 'no cut in spending at all – the books were not balanced', Mrs Badenoch claimed. 'We're spending more on welfare than we are on defence – that cannot continue,' she said. Mrs Badenoch had previously told The Telegraph that 'for all their mocking of Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not learnt the lessons of the mini-budget and are making even bigger mistakes'. Ms Truss, who spent 49 days in Number 10, hit back when she said that 'instead of serious thinking', Mrs Badenoch was 'repeating spurious narratives'. She continued: 'I suspect she is doing this to divert from the real failures of 14 years of Conservative government in which her supporters are particularly implicated. 'It was a fatal mistake not to repeal Labour legislation like the Human Rights Act because the modernisers wanted to be the 'heirs to Blair'. 'Huge damage was done to our liberties through draconian lockdowns and enforcement championed by Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings. 'The economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by Sunak. The huge increase in immigration has been a disaster.' Mrs Badenoch also took questions about her identity, after she told the Rosebud podcast: 'I have not renewed my Nigerian passport, I think, not since the early 2000s. 'I don't identify with it any more, most of my life has been in the UK and I've just never felt the need to.' The North West Essex MP told ITV Anglia: 'I am definitely an Essex girl, that is a fact.' A London Assembly member before she took her Commons seat in 2017, Mrs Badenoch said: 'I represent an Essex constituency, these are my people. 'I was a Londoner, but Essex people asked me to be their MP, and I want to make sure that I do them proud. And I love this part of the world. 'It's fantastic being here. It's a rural community, and I've been talking to the farmers here. I talked about how my grandfather was a farmer, it's very hard work. 'The people of Essex and East Anglia – they are grafters. 'They work hard, and I want to make sure that we do right by them.' Mrs Badenoch spent Tuesday morning at a farm in Little Walden, where she tried her hand at harvesting wheat using a Claas Lexion combine harvester. She told farmers: 'A lot of farming just feels like constant interference. 'Everything is interfered from the minute you wake up.' Examples of interference included 'chemicals and insecticide, people you're hiring, how much you've got to pay them', plus changes to 'employers' NI (national insurance), then somebody wants to put pylons on, there's compulsory purchase, it's impacting the cost of the land, if you want to add a new farm building, there's planning applications', she said. 'It's just endless constant Government saying, 'You can't do this, you can't do that, you can't move forwards'. 'And the burden in my view has now crossed the threshold.'

Tory and Reform politicians endanger trials with immigration ‘hysteria', say former ministers
Tory and Reform politicians endanger trials with immigration ‘hysteria', say former ministers

The Guardian

time35 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Tory and Reform politicians endanger trials with immigration ‘hysteria', say former ministers

Conservative and Reform UK politicians are fuelling 'hysteria and anger' over immigration, with criminal trials put at risk of collapse, former ministers and police have warned. Protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers have spread across the country in recent weeks, while debate about immigration – including instances of misinformation – has intensified. At a Reform press conference on Monday, a man awaiting trial was referred to as 'the criminal' by a Reform council leader despite not yet being convicted of any crime. Questioned on whether contempt laws had been broken, the party's leader, Nigel Farage, said it was 'good' that the council leader had become 'slightly emotional'. Amid growing pressure, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said on Tuesday that she had asked for a change in official guidance to permit police to release the ethnicity or immigration status of criminal suspects. Dominic Grieve, a former Conservative attorney general, told the Guardian he was concerned about the 'fuelling of hysteria by politicians' and said some were breaking the law by commenting on future trials in serious cases such as rape and abduction. Certain politicians 'seem to have thrown the rulebook in the bonfire', he said. Britain's former top counter-terrorism chief warned that comments from Farage and the Tory shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, risked 'unwittingly' inciting violence, accusing them of copying Donald Trump's techniques by hyping fears over immigration to try to win votes. Neil Basu, a former assistant commissioner with the Metropolitan police, said it was 'appealing to the worst kind of populist sentiment'. Asked if such rhetoric risks contributing to a risk of last summer's violence, Basu said: 'Yes … they should be very careful about the language they use. It is capable, demonstrably, of causing violence.' The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said it was time for the attorney general, Richard Hermer, to issue a formal warning to Farage about comments on live criminal cases. 'Farage and the Conservatives are … openly trying to tear down our justice system, just as the Maga movement has done in the US,' Davey said. 'Irresponsible comments like these put prosecutions at risk and could let dangerous criminals walk free. The attorney general must step in and send a formal warning to Farage that contempt of court will not be tolerated.' Others who appealed for a change in tone included the former justice secretaries Robert Buckland, David Gauke and Charlie Falconer, as well as the former chair of the justice select committee, Sir Bob Neill, who said they were worried about the febrile environment – though several said more transparency from police over the ethnicity of suspects was also now necessary to calm tensions. The row over information withheld by police has been reignited after the 19-year-old Reform leader of Warwickshire county council, George Finch, said police were refusing to confirm details of two suspects charged after an alleged rape. Among other examples cited by critics was data used by Jenrick that 40% of all of the sexual crimes were committed by foreign nationals last year. The number of convictions is significantly lower. Grieve said he was extremely concerned about the consequence of the frenzied atmosphere on contempt of court laws, also citing the trial of two British Pakistani men over a police assault at Manchester airport. 'With social media, contempt of court has gone out of the window,' he said. 'It seems to be that it's a complete free for all, and for politicians who ought to know better to participate in this is actually scandalous. Certainly with some of the recent cases, politicians seem to have thrown the rulebook in the bonfire.' Buckland said he had supported changes to make the nationality of offenders publicly available, but he was concerned about the potential for misinformation. 'Politicians have a responsibility to use objective and tested data rather than distorted or incomplete information,' he said. Neill, a former Tory MP, said he was in favour of more transparency but alarmed at the willingness of politicians to risk undermining the courts. 'I'm afraid some people, including people in elected office, frankly do not understand the importance of the checks and balances in our system, which includes protecting the jury system,' he said. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The former Labour justice secretary Charlie Falconer said: 'The opposition feel the need the whole time to get headlines by constantly describing things in an extremist way, all the time it's saying, 'society will be on the verge of collapse unless something is done,'' he said. 'The language is much, much worse than it ever was five years ago. There's a more angry electorate, and there's too many politicians willing to use lurid language.' A Home Office source said it was vital that there was 'greater clarity on how contempt of court laws work alongside social media and today's communication environment', but stopped short of issuing warnings to politicians. Hermer has so far declined to intervene to warn politicians on the risks of potentially collapsing criminal trials. In a sign of how far misinformation has spread, polling from YouGov found the British public 'dramatically overestimate' the number of illegal migrants to the UK. Almost half of Britons – 47% – think there are more migrants staying in the UK illegally rather than legally, including about a third who believe it is 'much higher'. There are varied estimates of the numbers of those living in the UK without formal status, which is difficult to calculate, but the Migration Observatory's most recent figures said it was up to 1.3 million. But legal migration is far higher – about 10.7 million people in the UK were born in a different country. Attitudes to migration have significantly hardened. About 45% of Britons say they would support 'admitting no more new migrants, and requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the UK in recent years to leave'. Rights groups including Amnesty International have cautioned against releasing suspects' ethnicities, accusing the government of 'choosing to pour fuel on the fire of dangerous narratives, instead of taking action to address racism and hostility'. Cooper said the government had asked the Law Commission to review the guidance six months ago and expected it to conclude in the autumn. 'We do think the guidance needs to change,' she said, adding that it was already the case that where police deemed it necessary more information on nationality was released.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store