Kemi Badenoch has kicked off a reshuffle of her shadow cabinet, with Sir James Cleverly set to return to the Conservative Party front bench.
The Tory leader is bringing her former leadership rival back to the frontline to build party unity and bolster the party’s credibility.
A senior Tory source said Sir James would help “take the fight to this dreadful Labour government”.
The source confirmed Ms Badenoch will make a series of changes to her top team on Tuesday, adding that they “reflect the next stage of the party’s policy renewal programme and underline the unity of the party under new leadership”.
It is not known which job Sir James will take, but one figure Sir Mel Stride will stay on as shadow chancellor, limiting the top roles on offer. It had been reported that shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has been gunning for Sir Mel Stride’s job as shadow chancellor.
Ex-foreign secretary Sir James is the most high profile name preparing for a return to the front bench, with questions about whether other former ministers including Suella Braverman will be called up by Ms Badenoch.
Shadow health secretary Ed Argar was the first casualty of Ms Badenoch’s reshuffle, with the Tory leader thanking him for his service.
It had become a social media joke that searching Google for Ed Argar and his shadow cabinet brief revealed only his appointment to the role, suggesting he had failed to cut through with the public and media.
His resignation letter, which was written on July 9, cited an ongoing health issue after an illness last year.
The shadow cabinet reshuffle comes just eight months after Ms Badenoch was elected leader by Tory members and is an admission the party has been underperforming.
Even as she conducted her reshuffle, Ms Badenoch lost another defector to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Laura Anne Jones, a member of the Welsh Senedd, joined the party, following in the wake of two former Tory cabinet ministers, Jake Berry and David Jones.
Amid the continued rise of Reform UK, Ms Badenoch’s party has been unable to grab the agenda and get a clear message across. A spokesman for Mr Farage’s party said the reshuffle is “like moving deckchairs on the titanic”.
Only a handful of her shadow cabinet ministers have been prominent in the public eye since joining the Tory top team, including Mr Jenrick, who has made a series of eye-catching videos to expose social problems in the UK.
After May’s disastrous local election results, as well as months of dire showings in the polls, Ms Badenoch hopes the reshuffle will shore up her authority ahead of Tory conference in October.
Talk of a potential leadership challenge has been mounting, with Guto Harri, who worked for Boris Johnson during his time in No 10, warning recently that a bid to replace her was “inevitable”.
In January, Ms Badenoch’s spokesman ruled out any reshuffle of her top team before the next general election.
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. They crashed the economy and ran public services into the ground.
“The Conservatives haven’t changed. It’s the same old chaos.”
Sir James served as both foreign secretary and home secretary when the Conservatives were in power.
He stood as a candidate in last year’s Conservative leadership election, but lost out on the Tory top job ahead of the final heat between Mrs Badenoch and her now-shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick.
Since the leadership contest, Sir James has returned to the Tory back benches as the MP for Braintree.
He has used his influential position as a former minister to warn against pursuing populist agenda akin to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Appearing at the Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank last week, the senior Tory hit out at calls to “smash the system” and “start again from scratch”, branding them “complete nonsense”.
He also appeared to take a different position on net zero from party leader Mrs Badenoch in a recent speech, urging the Conservatives to reject climate change “luddites” on the right who believe “the way things are now is just fine”.
This is a breaking news story, more to follow…
