Kemi Badenoch had several tasks in choosing her Shadow Cabinet. She had to reward her supporters’ loyalty, bring the party together by reaching out to rivals, prepare to take the fight to Labour and Reform, and mark a clear change from Sunak, beginning the process of serious truth-telling she has heralded. On all those metrics except the first, she has largely failed.
Loyalty has very clearly been rewarded. As Max Kendix has pointed out, 11 of the 15 MPs who backed her at the contest’s start are now in the Shadow Cabinet. Only six of the 24 backed a rival. In sending Robert Jenrick to Shadow Justice – whilst appointing only two of his supporters, Ed Argar and Victoria Atkins – she has shown that she doesn’t believe he merits special treatment.
By not giving Substack star Neil O’Brien – who backed her in 2022 but switched to Jenrick this year – a Shadow Cabinet role, she put loyalty matters ahead of policy acumen. Making Mel Stride Shadow Chancellor and Priti Patel Shadow Foreign Secretary – the fifth and sixth-placed candidates – must be counted as a particular slight to a rival who only won one fewer MP.
Her inability to coax James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat to turn their services-infused party unity bonhomie into Shadow Cabinet participation leaves both stewing behind her. Both seem petulant: having talked a good game about bringing the party together, they have chosen to throw their toys out of their prams and refuse to serve just because they didn’t get the top job. How childish.
If members had hoped for a departure from Sunak, they would be disappointed. Badenoch’s transformation from the insurgent to the establishment is complete. All but three – Jenrick, Patel, and Richard Fuller – were ministers in the outgoing government. Despite immigration having been central to our defeat, Badenoch has opted for continuity at the Home Office with Chris Philp.
Undoubtedly, appointing Shadow Ministers with departmental experience – like Philp, Argar with Health, or Clare Coutinho remaining at Shadow Energy – aids them in shadowing their Labour equivalents. But with four years (at least) before the next election, plenty of time is available for new briefs to be mastered. Continuity, after a record defeat, seems unwise.
Patel’s appointment is a triumph for Conservative Friends of Israel. Not appointing Tugendhat would have led the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to put the Doomsday Clock back half an hour. But we all remember what happened the last time she had a foreign affairs brief, and the mess she made of controlling and reducing immigration as Home Secretary. She brings baggage, not gravitas.
Similarly, Stride, as a former chair of the Treasury Select Committee and confident media performer, will do a handy job of holding Rachel Reeves to account. But his appointment suggests neither a likely reckoning with the fourteen years of stagnation over which we presided or that Badenoch has an economic vision of her own, except that the number of HR managers is too high.
Coutinho, Atkins, and Jenrick have much to get their teeth into as their Labour equivalents preside over rolling blackouts, angry farmers, and revolving-door prisons. Expect Gareth Bacon to make a lot of noise about ULEZ. James Cartlidge will invoke the words “2.5 per cent” several million times, and Laura Trott will channel her Cameronite instincts into defending academies.
By combining the Scotland and Net Zero briefs, Andrew Bowie has been made the Shadow Minister for the North Sea. Jesse Norman is a comfortable enough House of Commons man. Alan Mak has an enthusiasm for technology, so his deployment to Shadow Science makes sense. As does Andrew Griffith to Shadow Business, after his private sector success.
Yet it is not a Shadow Cabinet that engenders huge enthusiasm or does Badenoch much help in addressing the existential threat to her leadership. Her eight predecessors since John Major have lasted, on average, three and a half years. That almost certainly wouldn’t get her to the next election. Even with Bob Blackman’s raised threshold, she is vulnerable, denuded of MP support.
But she has chosen to repeat Liz Truss’s mistake; rewarding her allies while humiliating her rivals. Two-thirds of MPs voted for a candidate other than her in the final round. Four-fifths did not do so in the first. Was it wise to so handsomely reward her long marchers whilst not finding top-table roles for rivals’ supporters like Danny Kruger, Alicia Kearns, and Nick Timothy?
Potential tensions are obvious. With Jenrick at Justice, how long can she avoid a row over the ECHR or Human Rights Act? What approach will Kevin Hollinrake take to opposing Angela Rayner – that Labour are going too far on planning reform, or not far enough? Are Tugendhat and Cleverly considering pastures new, or waiting for her to beg them to come back?
Is this a Shadow Cabinet to break from the last fourteen years, that shows voters we understand why we loathed? Is this a Shadow Cabinet that will be able to outflank Nigel Farage on immigration? Will it convince voters we can be trusted with public services and living standards? That this is not your father’s Tory Party? Or is it more of the same – and set to be punished accordingly?
Is Badenoch comfortable with what we might call a CDU strategy – admitting a few failures of the previous government, rhetorically committed to being sounder, and pitching towards 32 per cent of the vote, basking in Labour’s unpopularity – even if it leaves vast political space open to our AfD – a Reform rampant across the Red Wall, picking up those 2019 voters we have lost interest in?
Are we going to stagger to 2029 with Badenoch making a few half-decent speeches about rewiring government, hoping we can reunite a 2015 coalition of southern, better off, Lib Dem-leaners frightened by five more years of Starmer? Does that mean, whether we like it or not, that we are heading for a hung parliament, a coalition with Reform, and Farage in government?
All a long way off. Once Badenoch has her feet under the table, she may unleash the change she promises. Sceptics, inside and outside of Parliament, may be won around. Voters may start to come back; victory over Labour may start to look inevitable. Or, with egos bruised, rivals unappeased, and polls deteriorating, we will be doing this again in two years, after she shares Truss’s fate?
Of course, Badenoch was dealt a terrible hand. But it is up to her how she chooses to play it: who to promote, which areas to prioritise, and the impression she wants to convey to the electorate on the limited opportunities presented to her. With her Shadow Cabinet she has shown what – and who – matters to her. Time will tell as to the wisdom of her choices, and priorities.