Shadow Cabinet League Table: Badenoch bumped into third place

Another of Conservative Home’s shadow cabinet league tables and another where shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick tops the polls at +59.7 (a pattern that has continued since February). Only just, however, with a 2.5pt lead over shadow chancellor Mel Stride in a slight drop from Jenrick’s previous rating of +60.2.

Stride and Tory Party leader Kemi Badenoch swap places with the pair coming second (+57.3) and third (+56.2) respectively.

Like Jenrick it marks a slight drop for Badenoch with -3.8, but it keeps her in a podium position. This comes during a big week for Badenoch, who is doing her final prep ahead of tomorrow’s Budget response. But she had an unfortunate distraction yesterday as she was forced to respond to her party chairman’s tweet linking the Reform UK logo to a Nazi party badge.

Hollinrake had quote tweeted a post from Nigel Farage on Sunday, featuring a photo of a black and gold Reform badge featured on a “collector’s edition” of the Party’s football shirt, with a picture of a “Golden Party Badge” that was awarded to the first 100,000 members who joined Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.

The post was deleted, only to be put up again, this time as a retweet with a link to the full Wikipedia page about the Nazi badge. “He doubled down!,” one Tory source messaged into ConservativeHome.

👀 https://t.co/jKdP2Qm6jn https://t.co/8IyIVnZHHk

— Kevin Hollinrake MP (@kevinhollinrake) November 23, 2025

It sparked ire amongst some of his colleagues, including former home secretary Suella Braverman who tweeted: “I expected this from Labour not the Conservatives. Let’s raise the level of debate: criticise their policies, even challenge the people or their actions. But comparing Reform and their supporters to the Nazis is wrong, irresponsible and highly counter-productive. Kevin does not speak for me.”

Other Tory MPs weren’t so public with their concerns, contacting ConservativeHome with a variety of responses, including: “What the f**k – if this is our Reform strategy then we are screwed.”

“I thought we needed hundreds of thousands of their voters back,” another added, “it is just tactically and strategically inept”.

One said it “plays into Reform’s hands,” after Farage accused Hollinrake of “inciting” violence with the post and Reform’s head of policy Zia Yusuf responded by calling on other Tory MPs, including Jenrick, to say whether they think Reform supporters are Nazis. While a shadow cabinet member told ConservativeHome that it was “silly, unnecessary and not chairman like”. Although another shadow cabinet colleague defended Hollinrake with “… he didn’t say anything”.

“I get Kevin wants to be an attacking Chairman and that Reform chuck out some pretty unpleasant stuff about us, but unfortunately Zia Yusuf has a point that making Reform voters think we consider them akin to Nazi’s is tin eared when we are in a battle to either win them back or understand why they left us in the first place,” a senior Tory source added.

A Tory spokesman said: “Reform are more interested in tweets than the shame of their leader in Wales being jailed for 10 years for being Putin’s stooge, or their plan to scrap the two child benefit cap costing taxpayers more and more. Reform need to get off social media and explain why they’re so cozy with Russia and want more welfare.”

For her part, Badenoch refused to apologise for the Tory chairman’s post. She told GB News that he “didn’t actually say anything” and “just put a link to a Wikipedia page of who else had gold in historical badges”.

She said that Reform’s former Welsh leader Nathan Gill being sentenced to over 10 years in prison for taking pro-Russia bribes was a “much bigger deal” than Hollinrake’s tweet. “I’m not going to apologise for a tweet that was made in jest,” Badenoch added – going on to claim he was “being funny”.

With the economy on everyone’s mind heading into Budget week, the shadow chancellor will be pleased with his personal placing, coming second with a small uplift of +0.6. Labour are set to break their manifesto pledges on tax with a series of U-turns in a Budget by a thousand taxes. It is the Tories’ time to take the mantle, show up the Government and gather some momentum on a key voter issue. That Stride is being noted by members could show the message is at least getting through to the key Tory base.

Much of the rest of the table remains the same, with Chris Philp (+49.1) and Claire Coutinho (+41.7) continuing to round out the top five. Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge has a nice leap into sixth place with an impressive +15.9pt increase following his appearance at deputy PMQs. Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith is one of few others to see a significant shift of +4.3pt. His government opposite Peter Kyle yesterday admitted that Labour’s taxes are seeing people leave the UK while being unable to reassure businesses on the damaging effects of the Party’s Employment Rights Bill, so Griffith has plenty to go off.

Almost all of the remainder of the shadow cabinet see a slight drop from there on – perhaps some of the post-conference sheen has worn off. Three shadow cabinet members are now in the negative numbers, including shadow health secretary Stuart Andrew dropping down into the minus section on -1.8, alongside shadow science secretary Julia Lopez at -3.7 and shadow transport secretary Richard Holden who, yet again, places in dead last on -7.9.