Latest news with #JamesCleverly
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Call it the Kemi Badenoch conundrum: it's why the Tories are going nowhere fast
Kemi Badenoch's reshuffle of the shadow cabinet this week fell between two stools. It was not a de minimis reorganisation to account for the departure of Edward Argar from the health portfolio as a result of illness, but nor was it the sort of 'big bang' restructure that might have lent her leadership a sense of renewed momentum. I have heard few serious complaints about the appointments she did make, though a few – such as the removal of Jack Rankin, a close ally of Robert Jenrick, from his justice brief and his replacement with the Badenoch supporter Ben Obese-Jecty – have prompted some eye-rolls. You can detect similar tactics at work in the return to the frontbench of James Cleverly, who will now square off against Angela Rayner as shadow housing secretary. It's by no means an unwise appointment; Kevin Hollinrake, his predecessor, was not impressing in the role, and Cleverly is a strong media and Commons performer. But it can also be read as a bit of a balancing act. It is obviously destabilising for Badenoch's leadership to have Jenrick, the man almost universally regarded as her likely successor, as the highest-profile and best-performing member of the shadow cabinet. Elevating Cleverly, a potential rival, to a position where he can build a profile makes sense, in a divide-and-rule sort of way. The more serious sins, however, are sins of omission. By making changes to several major portfolios, such as appointing Richard Holden to transport, Badenoch has made all the changes she didn't make look like actual decisions. As such, her decision to retain the services of Priti Patel – whose only big moment since the general election has been a rash of well-deserved bad publicity when she asked to be thanked for the post-Brexit immigration 'Boriswave' – inevitably looks like an actual endorsement. Not helpful, if you're a leader trying to establish your own credibility on immigration. Ditto her not making space for rising stars of the 2024 intake, such as Katie Lam. In government, such a delay might make sense – but one of the urgent tasks facing the Tories is to present a fresh face to the electorate after 14 years in power, and Badenoch has missed an opportunity to do so. Politically, we might say that in the eyes of the party Badenoch had one mulligan on the shadow cabinet. Most people accept that it takes time for a new leader to find their feet, and that a leader's assessment of a colleague might be sharpened by actually working with them in opposition. Now she's had that mulligan, but at the same time hasn't really used it. More important, perhaps, is the departure of Lee Rowley as her chief of staff. Backroom appointments get less attention than ministerial changes, but they can be more significant. Rowley was one of Badenoch's few really close allies in politics, and such people play a critical role in any leadership. Theresa May might have survived the departure of Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill after the 2017 election, but it marked the point when she lost control of her own destiny. So what is going on? The semi-reshuffle illustrates a number of deep, structural problems facing Badenoch. Some of these are not her fault, others are. First, there is the simple fact that there are barely enough Conservative MPs to adequately staff the opposition frontbench. As such, any leader would need to give jobs to far more people than they didn't, which limits their ability to craft a shadow cabinet in their image – a problem compounded by the fact that the parliamentary Conservative party is deeply divided on the critical questions of what mistakes the party made in office and what it should do next. Any leader would face those problems. Badenoch has, however, made them more difficult for herself, most obviously by the way she won last year's leadership contest. Badenoch stood as a unifier, and has tried to make a virtue of party unity since becoming leader. But that unity was bought at a heavy price: not taking any policy positions. She summed up her pitch at her launch event as: 'I don't pretend I have all the answers, but I'm an engineer – and I know how to find them.' Tactically, this worked. But it did so by letting lots of people project their own hopes and preferences on to her. As a result, she can't build the shadow cabinet around a policy agenda because she doesn't have one yet; worse, agreeing one will be more difficult because nobody who backed her leadership committed themselves to any controversial policy changes by so doing. Further compounding all this is Badenoch's rapidly deteriorating position as leader. One plausible reason for not tapping up the 2024 intake is that bringing new people into the shadow cabinet team means kicking people out – and she cannot afford to create new enemies in the parliamentary party if she can possibly help it. In many ways, Badenoch's position is actually very similar to Rishi Sunak's during the dying days of the last government: trapped in an ever-weakening position and lacking the strength, the allies or the vision to make the sort of bold manoeuvre that alone might offer a way out. Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
The Independent
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Returning James Cleverly hits out at ‘one man band' Reform: 'The British people deserve better'
Sir James Cleverly has branded Nigel Farage 's Reform UK a a 'one-man band' and warned voters that the party is nowhere near ready to govern. The former foreign and home secretary, who this week returned to the shadow cabinet, complimented Mr Farage as'funny', 'interesting' and 'a very good communicator'. However, Sir James said Reform UK falls short of credibility. 'The challenge he's got is that he's the only one in his party that you can describe in those terms,' Sir James told The Times. 'If you're going to be taken seriously as a party of government, that's nowhere near enough. As much as he's smart and funny and talented, he's not omnipresent.' Questioning Reform's ability to govern, the former home secretary said: 'Who are Farage's shadow chancellor, shadow home secretary and shadow defence secretary? The fact is he hasn't got any of them. 'That's nowhere near good enough to be taken seriously as an alternative party of government. The British people deserve better.' He added that Mr Farage 'crumbles' under scrutiny, particularly when pressed on the cost of his policies. Sir James's return came as part of Kemi Badenoch 's shake-up of her top team, which she described as reflecting the Conservatives ' 'mission of renewal' after their election defeat. The former foreign secretary will now shadow Angela Rayner on housing, communities and local government. Sir James served in senior Cabinet roles when the Conservatives were in power before spending months on the back benches after coming third in last year's Tory leadership contest. As an influential former minister, he has since warned against pursuing a populist agenda like Mr Farage's Reform UK. Sir James also reflected on a turbulent personal year, losing a close army friend, his brother-in-law, and his father. He explained why he stepped back after the leadership race. 'I did actually need a bit of time, a bit more time with Susie, a bit of time with the family,' he told The Times. Now back in the shadow cabinet, he urged the party not to 'throw a leader under the bus' amid speculation over Ms Badenoch's future. 'My strong advice is [that] our effort, our time, our energy, our focus, is much, much better directed at making sure Kemi succeeds as leader. Kemi won fair and square. She's got strong ideas, she is a staunch Conservative,' he said. Sir James insisted the Tories must 'be hunters, not farmers' to win back voters.
Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Times
James Cleverly: I like Farage but Reform are a one-man band
Where many Tories view Nigel Farage as a menacing bogeyman, Sir James Cleverly is prepared to admit that he likes him. 'I've met him a couple of times,' Cleverly says. 'He's fun, he's funny, he's interesting. He's a very, very good communicator. He's very good at holding fort. He's a very clubbable person.' But for Cleverly, a Tory big beast who this week returned to the shadow cabinet, Farage has an inherent limitation: there is only one of him. 'The challenge he's got is that he's the only one in his party that you can describe in those terms,' Cleverly says. 'It's fine for what they've been doing at the moment, which is having him as the lead singer and everyone else if basically the backing band. But if you're going to be taken seriously as a party of government, that's nowhere near enough. As much as he's smart and funny and talented, he's not omnipresent.' • Shadow cabinet reshuffle: Badenoch returns Cleverly to Tory front bench Who, Cleverly rhetorically asks, are Farage's shadow chancellor, shadow home secretary and shadow defence secretary? 'The fact is he hasn't got any of them. That's nowhere near good enough to be taken seriously as an alternative party of government. The British people deserve better. He's their biggest advantage and their biggest disadvantage.' Farage 'crumbles' when pushed for details, Cleverly adds. 'We're now seeing that as soon as he's asked even for an order of magnitude explanation to the cost of some of his ideas he totally falls apart. When he's trying to outbid Labour on welfare spending, when you talk to him about how he's going to do that whilst also cutting taxes, he falls apart.' Cleverly was the big name in Kemi Badenoch's mini-reshuffle this week. Last October he dropped out of the Tory leadership contest after being bested by a margin of only four votes, going from runaway favourite to also-ran in an instant. Some of his supporters later admitted that they were so confident Cleverly would make it to the final pairing that they backed one of his rivals, a move designed to improve his chances of winning the overall contest. That turned out to be a catastrophic error. Cleverly decided to take a break. 'I'd come off the back of being foreign secretary, home secretary,' he says. 'During much of the previous couple of years Susie [his wife] was going through her cancer treatment, which actually impacted me more than I realised at the time. Then we went into an incredibly bruising general election campaign and instead of taking a breather over the summer I threw myself into a leadership campaign. At this point I realised that I did actually need a bit of time, a bit more time with Susie, a bit of time with the family.' Did he enjoy his time off? In fact it was a 'pretty turbulent' period, Cleverly says. At the beginning of the year one of his closest friends from his army days died after developing oesophageal cancer. 'In the early part of the new year I was with him when he died,' Cleverly says. 'The weekend after, my brother-in-law — Susie's younger brother — had a catastrophic heart attack and he died. And then, just over a week ago, my father died. So the first half of this year has been pretty full on.' When Cleverly was approached by the Conservatives' chief whip last week, he decided it was time for a return. He is now shadowing Angela Rayner's community and housing brief. 'I genuinely thought Labour would mess up,' he says. 'But they were messing up at such a rate [it] meant we had to get back on the front foot more quickly than perhaps anyone had envisaged. We didn't have the time in opposition to build up slowly and gently.' It does not look good for the Tories. Under Badenoch they have gone backwards in the polls and there have been complaints in the shadow cabinet about her leadership and her strategy. Some shadow ministers think she will be ousted after November, when the one-year protection period shielding her from a leadership challenge expires. 'Let's not do the whole kind of, 'Throw a leader under the bus and see if it works this time',' Cleverly says. 'It hasn't worked the last three or four times we've done it. My strong advice is [that] our effort, our time, our energy, our focus, is much, much better directed at making sure Kemi succeeds as leader. Kemi won fair and square. She's got strong ideas, she is a staunch Conservative.' • Emma Duncan: James Cleverly's homecoming is smart move for Tories Some of the attacks on Badenoch have been vituperative. The New Statesman reported that some Tories believe she is pulling her punches on illegal migration because she is an 'anchor baby', a term used in the United States to refer to people who ensure their children are born in a country in order to gain residency. Badenoch has said she was born in the UK because her mother, who is from Nigeria, came to get medical care at a private hospital. 'The idea of living in the UK and moving to the UK was not something that was at the forefront,' she has said. Cleverly says the attacks originate on the left and highlights the abuse he has suffered because his mother came to Britain from Sierra Leone. 'There's a particularly pernicious type of left-wing racism which rears its ugly head surprisingly regularly,' he says. 'This is one of the things I find really, really, really unpalatable. I had this when I was home secretary, when I was tough on migration. And people said, 'You're such a hypocrite to try to crack down on small boats because your mum was an immigrant'. 'Which implied that in the eyes of some people all immigrants are the same. That somehow my mum … playing by the rules, filling in the forms, joining the queue and spending a whole working life in the NHS, that somehow she is the same as someone that's paid a criminal to get here on a small boat. That I find incredibly distasteful. 'And sadly, it's unsurprising that Kemi is having these kind of accusations flung at her. I know she has got a bit of an armoured hide when it comes to this kind of comment, so I can't imagine she's staying awake over comments like that.' The Tories, he says, are still experiencing the wrath of voters after their 'comprehensive' defeat at the general election. 'You talk to voters [and] last year's general election feels a heartbeat away. They are still angry with us about the things they were angry with us about at the general election. There is a residual frustration with us and a newfound frustration with the Labour Party.' Cleverly's critics often call him a centrist. They point to his position on the European Court of Human Rights — he has repeatedly said it is no 'silver bullet' — and his criticism of the 'neo-Luddites' on the right opposed to green technology and who think that climate change campaigners are 'scaremongering'. Cleverly says those critics are wrong and describes himself as a 'Thatcherite Reaganite'. His leadership platform included a 'really significant reduction in welfare spending' and committing the party to spending 3 per cent on defence in government. Badenoch has committed to scrapping the net zero 2050 target, a position Cleverly agrees with. 'When we, as a party, were making that commitment on that timescale, it was prior to Russia's invasion [of] Ukraine, prior to much of the current conflict in the Middle East,' he says. 'The timetables that we set out before those major events are no longer tenable. 'We shouldn't be capping wells in the North Sea. We shouldn't be putting lead in our own saddles when it comes to competing on a global market. We shouldn't be throwing heavy industry under a bus. But while making sure we protect ourselves here, we should still be looking to take full advantage of the direction of travel in green technologies and energy technologies.' Badenoch is widely expected to announce at the autumn's party conference that she is committing the party to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). She has commissioned a review by Lord Wolfson, the shadow attorney-general, to look at the issue in the meantime. Will Cleverly back leaving the ECHR? 'The lesson we learnt from Brexit is if you want to make a big change like that, you have to have a delivery plan,' he says. 'Boring as this may sound, I'm actually going to wait for this incredibly smart and thoughtful person to do the analysis before I make a final judgment.' He is concerned about 'judicial activism', however. 'There are tensions that are being stoked because of perverse decisions by the immigration tribunal, through the judicial review process. What message does that send to people that have actually done the right thing and voted?' Cleverly says he feels sympathy for those protesting peacefully outside migrant hotels. 'I understand why they're so very, very angry,' he says. 'I understand why they look to the government that made a whole load of bold promises, who thought it was all going to be so terribly easy, and have let those communities down. Where I absolutely do not have any sympathy is for people who travel across the country to try to turn peaceful community protests into a violent, clickbait protest. Hijacking community concerns is something that should be responded to forcefully by the courts, by the police.' Surely the Conservatives were part of the problem? The failure to stop small boats crossing the Channel led to tens of thousands of people being housed in asylum hotels. 'I completely recognise that this very visible and very alarming spike in illegal migration … shot up while we were in government,' he says. 'The focus we had on this was relentless. We were willing to try a whole range of things. And that's in part where the Rwanda plan came from, looking at doing things really fundamentally different, as well as beefing up the National Crime Agency's work in Europe, disrupting criminal gangs, arresting people, deporting people.' • Badenoch says she would copy drastic cuts of Argentina's president Labour, he says, showed an 'appalling lack of planning and foresight' and its decision to cancel the plan to sent migrants to Rwanda was 'absolutely toxic'. On housing, Cleverly says he wants to make it easier to 'go up a little bit' by building new levels on existing buildings, as well as ensuring there is 'greater density' in cities with good-quality housing. He also could look at property taxes to help people get on the ladder. His overall message is that the Tories do not need to 'reinvent the wheel'. 'What we need to do is update the way we present that to a new generation of voters,' he says. 'But conservative principles are sound and we don't need to drift away from those conservative principles. And that's the reason we've been such a successful political party.' However, the Tories cannot afford to be passive and must go after the voters who have defected to other parties. 'We can't just rely on them to come back, we've got to go and get them,' he says. 'We need to be hunters, not farmers. We need to make the case. People voted for other political parties for a reason. And we need to go get them back.' Kemi Badenoch of Robert Jenrick? Kemi. We have got to give her a chance. Nigel Farage or Keir Starmer? Neither. They can go in a room together and talk about their ineptitude. British & Irish Lions or the English cricket team? Lions. I'm a rugby player. Opposition or government? Government. David Cameron always said a day in government is better than a year in opposition.
Glasgow Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Glasgow Times
Fact check: ‘Asylum hotels', employment data and ‘enhanced customs monitoring'
Is the Government 'opening up' asylum hotels? Earlier this week, amid concern about unrest outside a hotel in Epping used to house asylum seekers, shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly MP claimed in a broadcast interview: '[Labour] are opening up asylum hotels, they are increasing the use of asylum accommodation around the country'. It is true that under Labour the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels has increased, as our Government Tracker explains. According to the latest available data, 32,345 asylum seekers were housed in hotels at the end of March 2025, up from 29,585 at the end of June 2024, just before Labour came into office. The data also showed there were 71,339 asylum seekers living in other types of non-hotel accommodation at the end of March 2025, compared with 67,057 at the end of June 2024. The majority were in 'dispersal accommodation', which is longer-term temporary accommodation managed by providers on behalf of the Home Office, with others housed in 'initial accommodation', which is typically shared accommodation while an asylum seeker is having their claim for support assessed. The Home Office told us that 210 asylum hotels are currently in use as of July 23, and that they expected more to close. On March 3 2025, Dame Angela Eagle MP, minister for border security and asylum, said that in July 2024 there were 213 hotels in operation, suggesting the number of hotels in use is currently slightly lower than when Labour first came into office. According to the Home Office's latest accounts, 'the total number of contracted hotels reduced by 71 across 2024-25', although it did not specify the starting or end totals, and this time period also includes figures from when the Conservatives were in office. It is worth noting however that while the overall number of hotels in use appears to have come down slightly, there have been recent reports of new hotels being intended to house asylum seekers. It is possible this is what Sir James meant when he said Labour was 'opening up' hotels. We have contacted Sir James for comment. Unemployment and jobs: what has happened under Labour? In recent weeks we have seen contrasting claims being made about the labour market – in particular, on how unemployment has changed since Labour came into Government in July 2024. There are a number of different sources of statistics on the labour market. These datasets all measure slightly different things, and as a result debate on employment, unemployment and jobs can often be confusing – for example, we regularly see seemingly contradictory claims on these topics made during Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs), when in fact each side is referring to completely different data. For instance, during some recent sessions of PMQs, both the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner have claimed that 384,000 jobs have been created under Labour. These claims have been challenged by the Conservative party and others, who have pointed out that under Labour unemployment has risen. This confusion is likely because Sir Keir and Ms Rayner are referring to workforce jobs data, which includes both employed and self-employed jobs and does indeed show a 384,000 increase in the number of jobs between June 2024 and March 2025 (the latest month for which figures are available). But these figures look at the number of jobs and are not comparable with data on actual employment (or unemployment), which looks at the number of people who are (or are not) working, as some people have more than one job. Going abroad four times a year will not flag you to HMRC for 'enhanced customs monitoring' We have seen a number of social media posts claiming that the Government is introducing a new system called 'enhanced customs monitoring' on August 4 to 'track UK residents who leave the country more than three times within a 12-month period' to check they are living within their means. But this is not true, and no such system exists. Videos circulating online claim that on someone's fourth trip abroad, an automatic alert will be sent to the 'mobility oversight unit', said to be a new branch under HMRC and the Home Office, which will check whether people's 'declared income, employment status and tax residency match [their] lifestyle'. The videos claim this new system was revealed after a leaked briefing was reported by the Guardian newspaper. They go on to say this includes both holidays and work trips, and all modes of travel. A spokesperson for HMRC confirmed the information is untrue and told Full Fact that 'this video is disinformation, designed to cause undue alarm and fear'. They added: 'Anyone wanting information on rules around taxation should go to or seek advice from a tax professional.' Full Fact could not find any results for 'enhanced customs monitoring' or a 'mobility oversight unit' on UK Government websites, or on the Guardian website.
South Wales Argus
5 days ago
- Politics
- South Wales Argus
Fact check: ‘Asylum hotels', employment data and ‘enhanced customs monitoring'
Is the Government 'opening up' asylum hotels? Earlier this week, amid concern about unrest outside a hotel in Epping used to house asylum seekers, shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly MP claimed in a broadcast interview: '[Labour] are opening up asylum hotels, they are increasing the use of asylum accommodation around the country'. It is true that under Labour the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels has increased, as our Government Tracker explains. According to the latest available data, 32,345 asylum seekers were housed in hotels at the end of March 2025, up from 29,585 at the end of June 2024, just before Labour came into office. The data also showed there were 71,339 asylum seekers living in other types of non-hotel accommodation at the end of March 2025, compared with 67,057 at the end of June 2024. The majority were in 'dispersal accommodation', which is longer-term temporary accommodation managed by providers on behalf of the Home Office, with others housed in 'initial accommodation', which is typically shared accommodation while an asylum seeker is having their claim for support assessed. The Home Office told us that 210 asylum hotels are currently in use as of July 23, and that they expected more to close. On March 3 2025, Dame Angela Eagle MP, minister for border security and asylum, said that in July 2024 there were 213 hotels in operation, suggesting the number of hotels in use is currently slightly lower than when Labour first came into office. According to the Home Office's latest accounts, 'the total number of contracted hotels reduced by 71 across 2024-25', although it did not specify the starting or end totals, and this time period also includes figures from when the Conservatives were in office. It is worth noting however that while the overall number of hotels in use appears to have come down slightly, there have been recent reports of new hotels being intended to house asylum seekers. It is possible this is what Sir James meant when he said Labour was 'opening up' hotels. We have contacted Sir James for comment. Unemployment and jobs: what has happened under Labour? In recent weeks we have seen contrasting claims being made about the labour market – in particular, on how unemployment has changed since Labour came into Government in July 2024. There are a number of different sources of statistics on the labour market. These datasets all measure slightly different things, and as a result debate on employment, unemployment and jobs can often be confusing – for example, we regularly see seemingly contradictory claims on these topics made during Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs), when in fact each side is referring to completely different data. For instance, during some recent sessions of PMQs, both the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner have claimed that 384,000 jobs have been created under Labour. These claims have been challenged by the Conservative party and others, who have pointed out that under Labour unemployment has risen. This confusion is likely because Sir Keir and Ms Rayner are referring to workforce jobs data, which includes both employed and self-employed jobs and does indeed show a 384,000 increase in the number of jobs between June 2024 and March 2025 (the latest month for which figures are available). But these figures look at the number of jobs and are not comparable with data on actual employment (or unemployment), which looks at the number of people who are (or are not) working, as some people have more than one job. Going abroad four times a year will not flag you to HMRC for 'enhanced customs monitoring' We have seen a number of social media posts claiming that the Government is introducing a new system called 'enhanced customs monitoring' on August 4 to 'track UK residents who leave the country more than three times within a 12-month period' to check they are living within their means. But this is not true, and no such system exists. Videos circulating online claim that on someone's fourth trip abroad, an automatic alert will be sent to the 'mobility oversight unit', said to be a new branch under HMRC and the Home Office, which will check whether people's 'declared income, employment status and tax residency match [their] lifestyle'. The videos claim this new system was revealed after a leaked briefing was reported by the Guardian newspaper. They go on to say this includes both holidays and work trips, and all modes of travel. A spokesperson for HMRC confirmed the information is untrue and told Full Fact that 'this video is disinformation, designed to cause undue alarm and fear'. They added: 'Anyone wanting information on rules around taxation should go to or seek advice from a tax professional.' Full Fact could not find any results for 'enhanced customs monitoring' or a 'mobility oversight unit' on UK Government websites, or on the Guardian website.
