Latest news with #Cleverly
New Statesman
3 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
James Cleverly's shadow Tory leadership bid heats up
Photo byIs James Cleverly making another bid for the Conservative leadership? That's certainly how his speech at the Conservative Environment Network's Sam Barker Memorial Lecture on Wednesday night, in which he talked about 'rejecting both the Luddite left and the Luddite right', has been interpreted by Tory watchers. 'James Cleverly takes on Kemi Badenoch over decision to ditch net zero targets', read the Guardian headline. The Mail went with 'Kemi Badenoch faces Net Zero revolt as Tory big beast James Cleverly warns her to ignore climate change 'luddites''. The Telegraph, meanwhile, wrote it up as 'Former home secretary directly challenges Kemi Badenoch on net zero'. Cleverly himself has pushed back hard against the suggestion that his speech was in any way a rebuke of the current Tory leader, calling it 'fake news'. In a punchy Twitter thread, he pointed out that he never once mentioned the term 'net zero' in the speech (he also didn't mention Badenoch), and claimed protecting the environment ('like Margaret Thatcher once did') was 'in our economic and security interests'. Indeed, the text of the speech itself was far more about foreign policy (in particular the threat of Chinese dominance and mass migration caused by climate change) than it was about carbon emission targets. But the fractured state of the Conservative party is such that any intervention from a high-profile figure will be read as a tacit (or not so tacit) criticism of Kemi Badenoch's leadership and attempt at positioning to be her successor. That applies to Cleverly's environmental speech just as much as it applies to Robert Jenrick's viral videos on confronting fare-dodgers on the London Underground. It is the latter who has drawn the most attention in the seven months since Badenoch became leader. Partly, this is due to the fact that Jenrick was the runner-up, after a mix-up over vote-swapping meant Cleverly was knocked up before he had the chance to face the membership. Partly it's down to Jenrick's place in the shadow cabinet, whereas Cleverly has taken a break from frontbench politics. And partly it's to do with visibility – once dubbed 'a very ambitious blur' by Andrew Marr, no one watching Jenrick's frenetic activity in opposition has any doubt that he still covets the top job. Jenrick's stance, in the leadership contest and since, has been to shift rightwards and attempt to neutralise Nigel Farage by moving onto Reform's turf. But as the Tory party grapples with having to rebuild from an election calamity that saw it lose hundreds of seats to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, Cleverly's name is increasingly being whispered by moderate Conservatives anxious about both the polls and the Reform-wards tilt. Cleverly's positioning as the 'One Nation' candidate in the 2024 leadership race came as something of a surprise to those close to him. A Brexit-backer first appointed to the role of foreign secretary by Liz Truss, he assumed the role of the moderates' champion almost by default, with both Jenrick and Badenoch running from the right. One friend in the party described his politics as 'to the left of Kemi, but not by much – his heroes are Thatcher and Regan', and called the One Nation label 'grossly simplistic'. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe But it is true that Cleverly saw himself as a unifier, someone who could bring different strands of the party together after its worst ever defeat and who understood that parties can only win by building a broad coalition of support. Another ally said his pitch to the membership, had he got to that stage, would have been to argue there is more mileage in listening to voters who abandoned the Conservatives over concerns about competence and values rather than chasing people who have found a new home in Reform. At the time, the received consensus was that Tory members always pick the more right-wing candidate of the pair offered to them and would do again. That consensus is the reason Jenrick is the now bookies' favourite, seen as the likeliest successor to Badenoch. But something interesting may be happening to the Conservative membership. Tory members are notoriously hard to poll (we don't even know how many there are), but Reform now claims to have over 200,000. A substantial chunk of these are understood to be former Tories who have quit the party since the 2024 election. That will inevitably have shifted the internal dynamics among those who remain, perhaps to the extent that more moderate members – those repelled by Farage who find Jenrick's talk of some kind of pact with Reform anathema – now hold the majority. A Cleverly candidacy now, I was told by an active member in one local association, would have a much higher chance of success than in autumn 2024. (Others have different perspectives.) The parliamentary party too is more nuanced than current narratives about the Tories' rightwards tilt suggest. In the penultimate round of MP voting, the two candidates coded as more centrist – Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – received 59 votes together; Jenrick and Badenoch got a combined 61. (On the environmental front, the Conservative climate caucus in parliament boasts 49 MPs.) A former Tory MP referred to the remaining One Nation cohort as the 'sleeping giant' of the Conservative party – a group that, were it to band together, could be a serious force in parliament. It will not have escaped their notice that the Tories are spiralling situation under Badenoch. A poll last month put the Conservatives fourth – below Reform, Labour and the Lib Dems – on a popularity level not seen since 2019 and Theresa May's Brexit deadlock. One Tory insider called the figures 'extinction-level'. Some Conservatives are getting desperate: rumours are swirling of various plots to oust Badenoch, possibly even before her year's grace period as leader is up in November. A Survation poll last week suggested 60 per cent of 2024 Conservative voters thought bringing back Boris Johnson would be better than keeping Badenoch as leader. Against this backdrop, any signs of dissent are being seized upon. Earlier this week, eight Tory MPs (including Father of the House Edward Leigh) wrote to Keir Starmer saying they would support him if the government were to move to recognise a Palestinian state – another move interpreted as an attempt to 'defy' Badenoch. Cleverly gave his Conservative Environment Network speech the following day, and was similarly read as a rebuke. The rumour persists that a coup is just around the corner, and every intervention plays into that narrative. Any hint of a Cleverly revival, however, should be tempered with a few caveats, both personal and political. His wife Susie, who is herself much loved in Conservative circles, came through a difficult battle with an aggressive form of breast cancer two years ago, which would caution anyone considering what's widely considered one of the worst jobs in politics to think twice. 'I'm not sure he's really been able to be in that headspace,' was the assessment of one friend. More generally, while frustration with Badenoch is growing, even her fiercest critics acknowledge that changing leaders yet again would do 'irreparable damage' to the already wounded party and be 'a colossal act of self-harm'. And that's without taking into considering how difficult it is to rebuild so soon after an election. One former MP who lost their seat in July put it bluntly: 'She's doing an impossible job badly.' Even Jenrick, for all his obvious ambition, doesn't want a leadership challenge now. His video efforts are aimed firmly at attacking Labour figures (Keir Starmer, Richard Hermer, Sadiq Khan). Yes they can be viewed obliquely as presenting an alternative pattern for leadership, but it isn't Badenoch in the direct crosshairs. Axing a leader so soon would fuel Labour and Reform narratives that the Tory party is too dysfunctional to be taken seriously, and the new leader – whether Jenrick, Cleverly, or someone else entirely – would be facing the exact same challenges and the same uphill battle. Boris Johnson has in past years likened himself to Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman who 'returned to his plough' after leading the state at a time of crisis and was then called back to assume power a second time. But years before that the then London mayor described his ambition to be PM with the line that 'Obviously, if the ball came loose from the back of a scrum – which it won't – it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at.' A passionate rugby fan himself, this was the comparison made by several people close to Cleverly about his leadership hopes. That doesn't mean that the former home secretary was clueless as to how his speech might be interpreted. One of the major criticisms of Badenoch is not merely the direction in which she seems to be taking the Tories, but the fact this seems to be down to 'drift' as opposed to a conscious and deliberate strategy, leaving the party undefined and chaotic. 'The first stage of surviving is defining yourself,' one centrist Tory put it. They then quoted the line from the musical Les Miserables: 'It is time for us all to decide who we are.' Cleverly's bold defence of a Conservative environmental agenda – one that takes in both economic and national security concerns – should be read, they argued, as a reminder that there is another way of doing leadership, one that isn't afraid of taking stances that come with trade-offs, 'and someone has to be a flag-bearer for it'. Finally, there is the personality issue. While Badenoch's management style veers towards abrasive and her media appearances lack cut-through, Cleverly is respected from all wings of the party as a strong media performer who can bring people together. 'James was pointing out that charismatic leaders are available,' one Tory insider quipped. 'He can't help being likeable and human.' What the speech does reveal is how far perceptions of the Tory party have travelled in a very short space of time. When Badenoch announced the party's U-turn on net zero in March, Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, noted the decision 'undermines the significant environmental legacy of successive Conservative governments'. Six years ago Theresa May was signing the UK's net zero commitments into law; three and a half years ago Boris Johnson was championing Britain's climate leadership at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow. Back then, Cleverly's insistence that 'the idea that we must choose between a strong economy and protecting our environment is outdated and wrong' or support of climate commitments as 'defences against energy shocks and geopolitical instability' would not have been considered remotely controversial in Tory circles. Now, it's interpreted as a leadership challenge. And until the situation improves the Conservatives, so will everything else. [See also: Kemi Badenoch is in a hole – and she keeps digging] Related
Spectator
6 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Cleverly splits from Kemi on climate
Tree-hugging isn't just for the Greens, it seems – as former Tory leadership contender James Cleverly will insist this evening. At a London event tonight, the ex-Foreign Secretary will make the case that Conservatives should care about the climate and urge his colleagues to reject 'both the luddite Left and the luddite Right' on green policy. 'Conservative environmentalism doesn't mean a choice between growth and sustainability,' Cleverly will tell the Conservative Environment Network tonight in a dig at both the Labour government and Reform UK. The former Cabinet Secretary will speak this evening at the annual Sam Baker Memorial Lecture – where he will award Tory MP Andrew Griffith for championing the marine environment of Chagos. Cleverly will tell his audience that the country must 'push further, faster and smarter' on green tech, before going on:
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
James Cleverly should be allowed to speak about net zero
There will be a great wailing and a gnashing of teeth in parts of the Conservative Party tonight when former foreign secretary, former home secretary and former Tory leadership candidate James Cleverly takes the stage. Speaking at an event organised by the Conservative Environment Network, Cleverly will don the mantle of moderate conservatism and make the case for his party to embrace the drive towards net zero. This is a direct challenge to the party leader, Kemi Badenoch, who has been trying to woo Reform supporters back to the Tories by rejecting the Government's ambition to achieve a fully carbon-neutral UK by 2050. It's an act of political courage by Cleverly, who, had it not been for last-minute strategic shenanigans by his fellow MPs in the final round of voting in last year's leadership election, might now be sitting in the leader of the opposition's offices at Westminster. Cleverly already has a USP as a Tory politician: he sounds reasonable, down-to-earth and self-effacing, and was one of the party's more effective ministers in government. Taking a brave and principled stand in the face of public and party opinion doesn't necessarily make one right, however. But give Cleverly his due: no other MP has dared raise the standard for moderate conservatism since the party's well-deserved humiliation at the polls last year, despite its long and honourable tradition of centrism. It was only Margaret Thatcher's arrival as leader in 1975 that transformed the former 'one nation' Conservatives into a more radical, Right-wing, ideological and – for a time, at least – electorally dominant party. That moderate tradition, most recently and effectively represented by the former chancellor and three-times leadership contender, Ken Clarke, remains a serious and respected strand within the party. Without it, the Tories might as well rebrand themselves 'Reform' and invite Nigel Farage to take over as leader. The last Conservative leader of the opposition to succeed in becoming prime minister was that well-known 'green' Tory, husky-hugging David Cameron. True, he only won the keys to Number 10 with the help of the Liberal Democrats, but he also won 37 per cent of the electorate's support – significantly more than the victorious Labour Party won last year. Alas, I fear, for Cleverly, times are very different today. The Conservatives still need to be a broad coalition that includes the likes of Cleverly sitting alongside, not behind, Badenoch on the green benches. But the nation's focus has shifted in the last 15 years, hence the apparent advance of Farage and his party. In 2010 there was a degree of consensus across the main parties that the science of climate change was unarguable and that the outcome of elections would decide to what extent we might avoid global catastrophe. Cynicism has set in since then. People still believe the science, but have heard the increasingly dire warnings so often that they no longer believe there's much that mere mortals in Whitehall can do about it. There is certainly a much higher degree of scepticism in the UK about the wisdom of sacrificing personal income (in the shape of higher taxes), jobs and our standard of living in order to slow a chemical process that is largely being caused by much larger countries who are doing much less to prevent it. Even Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, has warned that net zero is 'doomed to fail' and that it was wrong that people were 'being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal'. Arguably, when Cleverly has deliberately chosen to ally himself with the Government's chief net zero evangelist, climate change secretary Ed Miliband, 'courageous' is understating the case. Still, Cleverly is a big beast in the political jungle of Westminster, and the Conservative Party, reduced to barely 120 Commons seats, can hardly afford to reject his counsel entirely. Voters are naturally suspicious of parties that confine themselves to a narrow bandwidth of political opinion – it restricts their ability to appeal to as broad a slice of the electorate as is necessary to win elections. Thatcher solved that problem by having the likes of Jim Prior and Ian Gilmour in her cabinet. Cameron did it by keeping colleagues such as Iain Duncan Smith and Liam Fox within his centrist embrace, as well as Ken Clarke himself. Strategically, I suspect Cleverly is wrong and Badenoch is right on net zero: public anger about domestic bill prices is real at a time when the government is making life ever more difficult and expensive for our domestic oil and gas industry. That is a political reality that would still exist even without challenge on the Conservatives' Right flank from Reform, and there seems little public appetite for more concessions by UK consumers to compensate for the inaction of the US, China and India. Some will criticise Cleverly for timing his intervention on the eve of the Hamilton by-election for the Scottish Parliament. I hate to break it to them, but not only were the Conservatives never in contention in this former Labour heartland seat, but they are nowhere near challenging for office at next year's Holyrood elections. The best the party was ever likely to do in tomorrow's contest was to trail in fourth place, behind the SNP, Reform and Labour. Cleverly's choice to delay his speech would not have changed that outcome. But the Braintree MP is an asset to the party and ought to be seen as one. He's wasted on the back benches. If his disagreement with his leadership over net zero cannot be navigated and accommodated, the Conservative Party is in an even worse condition than I thought. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
BBC News
03-05-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Lack of goals costs us
Watford head coach Tom Cleverley said a simple lack of goals was behind his side's stuttering finish to the Championship season and subsequent failure to secure a play-off Hornets ended a run of four consecutive league losses with a final-day draw against Sheffield Wednesday at Vicarage that sequence, which rounded of a miserable streak of just two wins in 12, meant they placed 14th."We've not scored enough goals and we together have to realise that was a big part in why the play-off charge wasn't sustained," Cleverly said."Now it's for all of us to recognise why we didn't sustain these results and learn from that."Cleverley was, however, pleased with how his side performed against the Owls. "I thought it was a strong performance," he added. "We dominated the game for large spells, especially almost all the second half, and did more than enough to win."I was really pleased with how much desire we showed to win the game in what was literally just a battle for 12th place."I think you saw a lot of promise, a lot of players who were playing football in a way that's entertaining."
Western Telegraph
30-04-2025
- Business
- Western Telegraph
Farm tax is risk to UK food security, says former foreign secretary
The former foreign secretary told reporters at a press conference at the National Liberal Club in Whitehall he feared the Government had not considered a scenario of 'moderate disruption' to food supplies, despite warning signs during the Russian-Ukraine war. Braintree MP Mr Cleverly spoke after farmers parked two vintage tractors outside the National Liberal Club on Tuesday as part of a protest by Save British Farming against the tax changes. I do worry that this Government is really blase about food and farming, because it cannot envisage a circumstance where there is even a moderate disruption of UK accessibility to core foods James Cleverly 'I do worry that this Government is really blase about food and farming, because it cannot envisage a circumstance where there is even a moderate disruption of UK accessibility to core foods, particularly carbohydrates,' Mr Cleverly said. 'If they're right, well, I'm not sure I still agree with driving farms out of business. If they're wrong, the stakes are so high it is unconscionable.' The UK is facing 'serious risks' to its food security as a result of long-term declines in the natural environment and worsening climate change, according to the latest three-yearly government report on the matter published in December. The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) report also noted how geopolitical tensions have impacted the country, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine leaving the UK facing the highest food inflation in the G7, although 'sustained' food item shortages were avoided. Farmers have argued that Rachel Reeves' inheritance tax hike on agricultural properties worth more than £1 million would undermine national food security in a critical moment. Speaking to reporters, Mr Cleverly argued policymakers should treat agriculture with the same respect as they do the automotive industry and technology companies and called the Chancellor's measures 'one of the most stupid and counterproductive proposals I have ever seen'. People take part in a Save British Farming protest in London (Eric Williams/PA) 'One of the problems we've had for a number of decades is we've stopped being scared about things that we should be scared of. 'Because we haven't had food shortages in the UK in living memory, we've kind of convinced ourselves that that can never happen. 'I don't think it will happen. I don't think it's necessarily likely to happen, but it's not something that is helpful to think of as being impossible. 'We had a nasty food inflation spike when Ukrainian grain exports were disrupted, even temporarily.' Mr Cleverly warned in such a scenario, 'voters will go hungry, and then they'll get angry, and then they will turn on the government'. He added: 'It will be politically catastrophic for the Labour Party. That's the kind of thing that gets you kicked out of government, not just for one or two political cycles, but potentially permanently. 'The biggest falls come after the biggest victories,' he said, noting how the Conservative's major losses last year followed the successes the party had in 2019. A Defra spokesperson said: 'Our commitment to farmers remains steadfast. 'This Government are investing £5 billion into farming, the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country's history. 'Our reform to Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs will mean three quarters of estates will continue to pay no inheritance tax at all, while the remaining quarter will pay half the inheritance tax that most people pay, and payments can be spread over 10 years, interest-free. This is a fair and balanced approach which helps fix the public services we all rely on.'
