Kemi Badenoch is set to appoint her former leadership rival Sir James Cleverly to the Tory frontbench in a reshuffle of her shadow cabinet.
The Leader of the Opposition will bring back the former Home Secretary to build party unity and bolster the party’s credibility in a reshuffle of her top team on Tuesday.
He will return to the Conservative front bench as the shadow housing secretary, shadowing Angela Rayner.
As well as Sir James's appointment, it is understood Kevin Hollinrake will move to the role of party chairman, replacing Nigel Huddleston, who will become shadow culture secretary.
Mr Hollinrake was previously in the shadow Ministry of Housing job. Stuart Andrew will become shadow health secretary, replacing Ed Argar who is stepping down for health reasons.
As he prepares for his last parliamentary oral questions from the front bench, I want to put on record my sincere thanks to Ed Argar for serving in my Shadow Cabinet.
— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) July 22, 2025
I wish him the very best for a speedy recovery and return to full health, and so I will be making a few changes… pic.twitter.com/FWoC7L19nd
Ms Badenoch posted on X mid-morning: “As he prepares for his last parliamentary oral questions from the front bench, 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, and so I will be making a few changes to my front bench later today.”
Earlier, a Conservative source said: “The Leader of the Opposition will be making some changes to her frontbench team today.
“The changes reflect the next stage of the party’s policy renewal programme and underline the unity of the party under new leadership.
“Sir James Cleverly is expected to return in a prominent frontbench role to take the fight to this dreadful Labour Government.”
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, and was favourite to win at one time, but lost out on the Tory top job ahead of the final heat between Mrs Badenoch and her now-shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick.
Some of Sir James’ team are believed to have sought to engineer the outcome of the leadership contest, by backing another candidate, a move which if true backfired spectacularly as he failed to make the shortlist of two which was put to party members.
Sir James is now seen as a frontrunner in a possible future leadership contest if Ms Badenoch fails to boost her party’s popularity among voters and it suffers poor results in the London, local, Scottish and Welsh elections next spring.
His communication skills are believed by some MPs to be better than those of Mr Jenrick, who would also be expected to throw his hat into the ring if there is another leadership contest,
The Tories are trailing Labour in the polls, with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK comfortably ahead of both of them, with around 30 per cent of the vote, according to some surveys which put the party on track to be the largest in Parliament.
The Conservatives have seen their poll ratings plummet to historic lows after their disastrous General Election last July which saw their parliamentary party reduced to just 121 MPs.
A reshuffle is a gamble for Ms Badenoch as often they end up angering more MPs than they please, with some promoted, others demoted, and a bigger group likely to feel they have been overlooked.
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 Mr 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”.
A list of full changes to the Conservative frontbench team will be announced on Tuesday afternoon.
