A reshuffle without a story: Tories left unmoved by Badenoch’s shadow cabinet tweak

It was a long shadow cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday as LOTO and the whips office struggled to confirm one of their appointments, with the MP in question out of the country and not able to get to his phone.

“Why are they taking so long,” one Tory advisor texted me at the time. A shadow cabinet minister messaged in: “Just get on with it. It’s not like we are in government and Kemi is dealing with international crises here.”

It was a hiccup that often comes with reshuffles but the annoyance felt by other MPs, and the haphazard planning involved, speaks to the pervasive feeling amidst Tory MPs at the end of it. What was the idea behind the shadow cabinet reshuffle? 

“It all feels bitty and like there is no overarching narrative. It doesn’t seem well thought through,” one senior Tory tells me. Another MP adds: “We are still hitting 15-18pts in the polls and this is what we go for? It is just lacking. Just a dud.”

Despite previously insisting the entire shadow cabinet would be in place until the next election, with former shadow health secretary Ed Argar stepping back for medical reasons, it meant making some changes.

Many expected it to be small – “a shuffling of the deckchairs,” as one MP put it – but there had been an eagerness for “meaningful change”, and now disappointment at what some have branded “a wasted opportunity”.

At one point it was thought LOTO might be settling on a wider, more radical reshuffle.

There are at least two members of the shadow cabinet who are understood to have been spoken to about changing roles, both of whom expressed that they did not want to move – and, lo and behold, they were not moved.

One MP suggests it speaks to a lack of authority: “If there are people you’re wanting to shift at the top table, they have hit back and you’ve rolled over – it says a lot about the leadership’s weakness.”

Changes were made, people were moved, but it felt a bit of a damp squib. She has neither fully reached for stability in bringing back even more of the old guard, nor has she gone bold and reached for extra energy and firepower in elevating more new faces or promoting those getting cut through.

The headline appointment was the return of James Cleverly to the shadow cabinet. Discussions with him were still ongoing last week but I understand the pitch made by Kemi was specifically for him to go up against Rayner. It will help to have another Commons and media performer at the top end of the shadow cabinet. But the move has also been thought of as one to “help neutralise Robert Jenrick” by having another strong figure flanking more to the centre.

Promoting Neil O’Brien – former spad to George Osborne and Theresa May, as well as co-founder of the think tank Onward – to focus on policy renewal and development has gone down well, as has giving shadow home office minister Matt Vickers deputy chairman of the party. But there are not an awful lot of wins that are being sold around the party.

It has been noticed that the bottom three of our shadow cabinet league table have all, for one reason or another, exited.

But the earlier senior Tory tells me: “Somehow we’ve had a reshuffle that is the continuity of the last government. Not a fresh, confident look. You could’ve had Stride, Patel and Cleverly in top roles any time over the past few governments.” It doesn’t do an awful lot to aid the argument that the party is moving on from its record in government.

Rumours that some of the 2024 intake would get a promotion, creating a new guard, went unfounded – and yet there has been more doubling up of junior shadow ministers. Shadow financial secretary Gareth Davies has been given extra work as a shadow under secretary of state in DBT. The same goes for shadow city minister Mark Garnier who has now got a second role in DWP.

There’s no doubt of their ability to do the work, but with already being set in their Treasury roles, there is a questioning of why those jobs weren’t expanded outwards.

“It is the unimaginative choice,” a senior Tory MP says.

In fact the only movement of the new MPs was shifting Jack Rankin to education pps – away from the Justice team, and away from Jenrick. Rankin is a staunch Jenrick ally and was a big supporter during the leadership campaign. Badenoch backer Ben Obese-Jecty, who originally held the education brief as well as defence, has had a simple swap to replace him. “I wonder why that was?” one Tory source asks coyly.

That Rankin was the only move sparked some confusion with their fellow new intake. “It is very odd,” one MP says, but it was pointed out that only being 32-years-old, Rankin could call back to his days in education more vividly than some of his colleagues.

One senior Tory defends not elevating any of the new MPs. “Nowadays you don’t need a position to cut through,” they tell me, “people like Katie Lam have been cutting through by just using video and social media”.

But still, another MP says: “You need people who are hungry, which the 2024 grouping are, especially if the leader doesn’t seem to be it herself. But judging by the new look of that shadow cabinet, a lot seem to be of the same appetite.”

It has left a number of Tories questioning why you would go through the hassle for such a minor reshuffle. It may also leave Badenoch open to a new line of attack.

“She was able to use the excuse that people thought the shadow cabinet wasn’t up to scratch,” one MP tells me. “Now, you’ve supposedly made your best efforts on two occasions. If fates don’t improve, is it the shadow cabinet or the person picking that is the problem?”

They say it feels like Badenoch hasn’t “really grasped” the situation she is in – and “just how dire it is”.

Other than Julia Lopez and Alex Burghart, they question whether there are many real Badenoch allies left: “It could be quite a lonely cabinet for Kemi.”

With her chief of staff Lee Rowley – someone she once referred to as “pretty much my closest friend in politics” – now also set to leave in October for the private sector, and replaced by his deputy Henry Newman (a former advisor to Michael Gove), one senior Tory quips: “It is now officially Gove’s extended Private Office.”

The change in Loto, some hope, shows Badenoch is employing a bit more ruthlessness in being willing to lose friends from her team if it means winning in the political arena. 

But the mark left is not necessarily a good one. An MP tells me: “It is not a surprise if Lee wasn’t up to it, but it looks like a lot of the people not up to it have survived.”

That pervasive feeling I mentioned at the start is one at the root of many Tory nerves, and as the same MP adds: “It is that she just doesn’t have the knowledge of where to go next.”