Kemi Badenoch shuffles deckchairs on the Tory Titanic
Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet reshuffle saw plenty of promotions for yesterday’s men – but the party is on an inevitable course towards an electoral iceberg, says William Atkinson
Over the weekend, I re-read London Fields, by Martin Amis. (This paper’s Opinion and Features Editor introduced me to the late author two years ago, and of all his works, it was his introspective black comedy come murder mystery come darting handbook that I most enjoyed). Overhanging the novel is an all-pervasive sense of death: of the terminally ill narrator, of Nicola Six, who foresees her own murder, and of the planet, trapped in a moral, environmental and geopolitical crisis.
I encounter this same death-feeling when thinking about the Conservative Party. I’m exhausted trying to find new ways to say that Kemi Badenoch is a dud, the party is in terminal decline and that it has receded into irrelevance – first hated, then ignored and now a footnote to Nigel Farage’s success.
Nonetheless, such is the difficulty that light has in penetrating the CCHQ führerbunker that the party persists in pretending all is fine. Accordingly, Badenoch reshuffled her Shadow Cabinet on Tuesday, spurred on by Ed Argar standing down from the health brief following an illness. The most eye-catching appointment was the return of James Cleverly: now ensconced opposite Angela Rayner as the shadow housing secretary.
Cleverly’s supporters argue his return is a fillip: a confident media-performer, with considerable media experience, will now be able to hold Labour’s most eye-catching politician’s feet to the fire over the central plank of their growth strategy. But the ex-Home Secretary has always struck me as being like a Tory Mr Blobby, bumbling from gaffe to gaffe, redeemed by an admirable love for his wife and a rugby club bonhomie some find endearing. But the jury is still out on whether he will inject some sanity into Conservative housing policy, with his Yimby credentials much debated.
Not very Cleverly
The Cleverly return set the tone for the other few appointments Badenoch managed. It was an excellent day for yesterday’s men. Richard Holden – the former party chairman who stitched up his selection for a safe seat by imposing a candidate shortlist consisting only of himself – was made Transport Secretary. Since his majority in Basildon in only 20 votes, he must be getting a lot of experience of our road and public transport networks, constantly travelling back to fend off Reform.
The only bright spot amid the changes was the elevation of Neil O’Brien to a new role overseeing policy development. O’Brien is the cleverest MP on the Tory benches. This isn’t even a case of the one-eyed man being king: he is a one-man think-tank, whose Substack has produced more policy ideas since the election than the rest of his shadow ministerial colleagues put together. But there were no positions for Katie Lam or Nick Timothy – the two most impressive MPs of the 2024 intake.
The ex-Home Secretary has always struck me as being like a Tory Mr Blobby, bumbling from gaffe to gaffe, redeemed by an admirable love for his wife and a rugby club bonhomie some find endearing
But the most striking move came not in Badenoch’s Shadow Cabinet, but in her personal team. Her chief of staff Lee Rowley, a former MP, departed for the private sector. Rowley was Badenoch’s closest ally in politics, entering Parliament at the same time as her. If he is out, it suggests Badenoch is looking for someone to blame for her party’s dire straits. The death-stench grows stronger.
This was a reshuffling of deckchairs on the Tory titanic – a set of cosmetic changes unlikely to do anything to arrest the party’s doom spiral. It seems especially pertinent considering the growing consensus on Badenoch’s leadership: that it is unlikely to last another year, with MPs sufficiently restless that a confidence vote – and the elevation of Robert Jenrick – is only a matter of time. But as energetic as the Shadow Justice Secretary is, even he may not be able to avoid the electoral iceberg.
William Atkinson is assistant content editor at The Spectator