James Cleverly gets new role as Kemi Badenoch reshuffles top team

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has made Sir James Cleverly her shadow housing secretary as part of a reshuffle of her senior team, the BBC has been told.

The new role would see Sir James, a former foreign and home secretary, go head-to-head with Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in Parliament.

He is expected to replace Kevin Hollinrake, who will become Conservative Party chairman.

The BBC understands current party chair Nigel Huddleston will become shadow culture secretary.

Stuart Andrew moves from culture to health, replacing Edward Argar, who has confirmed he will be standing down following a “health scare”.

In a letter to Badenoch, the Melton and Syston MP said he had “listened to what the doctors said to me… and have concluded that lightening my front bench workload over the coming months in order to complete my recovery and fully restore my health in that period, is the sensible approach”.

Posting his resignation letter on social media, Badenoch said: “I want to put on record my sincere thanks to Ed Argar for serving in my shadow cabinet.

“I wish him the very best for a speedy recovery and return to full health.”

Badenoch had been poised to make small changes to her frontbench team in order to replace one or two shadow ministers who wanted to step down for personal reasons.

However, the Tory leader opted for a bigger shake-up, with about half a dozen changes expected. A full list of appointments is expected to be published later on Tuesday afternoon.

No one from the 2024 intake of Conservative MPs is expected to get a promotion to the shadow cabinet.

Shadow education minister Neil O’Brien is expected to be promoted into the shadow cabinet in a new role entitled shadow minister for policy renewal and development.

John Glen, a Treasury minister in the previous Conservative government, has been made Badenoch’s parliamentary private secretary – a role which tasks the MP with becoming his leader’s ‘eyes and ears’ in Parliament.

Badenoch’s front bench currently includes shadow home secretary Chris Philp, Dame Priti Patel as shadow foreign secretary and Laura Trott in the education brief.

Earlier on Tuesday, a party source said the frontbench changes would “reflect the next stage of the party’s policy renewal programme and underline the unity of the party under new leadership.

They added that Sir James Cleverly would be given a prominent front bench role to “take the fight to this dreadful Labour government”.

Sir James has been a backbench MP since being eliminated from the Tory leadership election in October 2024, after which Badenoch went on to defeat her closest rival, the now-shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick.

He received a knighthood in April 2025 as part of former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s resignation honours list.

The reshuffle comes eight months into Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservatives – a period which has seen the party regularly poll third or fourth, behind Labour, Reform UK and sometimes the Liberal Democrats.

In May, the Tories suffered a poor set of results in the local election, losing control of 16 councils.

In an interview with the BBC in June, Badenoch said she was “going to get better” as leader, adding: “You don’t want people to be the very best they’re going to be on day one.”

She added that the Conservatives had “hit rock bottom” at the last general election and that her efforts to change her party was “not going to happen overnight”.

Responding to the reshuffle, a Labour source said: “After initially claiming her shadow cabinet would be in place until the next election, Kemi Badenoch has already hit the panic button.

“The Tory leader can shuffle as many deckchairs as she likes, but it’ll still be the same old faces that were responsible for 14 years of failure.”

Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Olney said: “Kemi Badenoch has appointed the very man who said that replacing Liz Truss as prime minister would be a terrible idea.”

Referencing Sir James’s defence of Truss when he was serving in her government, she added: “it’s like appointing an iceberg apologist to a role steering the Titanic.”