Kemi Badenoch has now appointed her full shadow cabinet. Here are the people handed the key jobs. Mel Stride – shadow chancellor After much jockeying for the job of shadow chancellor, and predictions the role would go to the key Badenoch supporter Andrew Griffith, the new Tory leader has chosen a relative centrist whom most in the party will see as a safe pair of hands.
Stride, an MP since 2010, did about as well as he could have expected in standing to replace Rishi Sunak, raising his profile before being eliminated in the second round of MPs’ voting. A former Treasury minister and chair of the Treasury select committee, Stride had been work and pensions secretary under Sunak and kept the job in opposition. While he is less prone than his new boss to making headlines with his comments, it emerged during the Conservative conference that in 2012 Stride had called for looser rules on maternity rights to boost business. Priti Patel – shadow foreign secretary While other Tory big beasts such as Jeremy Hunt and James Cleverly have seen the dawn of the Badenoch era as a signal to return to the backbenches, Patel is rewarded for her enthusiastic – if slightly unfocused – leadership bid, in which she was the first of six candidates eliminated, with the post of shadow foreign secretary.
An MP since 2010, with a decade of frontbench experience, Patel certainly has the experience for the job. Some in the party will nonetheless see her appointment as a risk, given Patel can at times rival Badenoch for combustibility and chaos. Patel’s first cabinet job, as international development secretary, ended in disaster when it emerged that she had essentially been conducting her own freelance foreign policy while on holiday in Israel. She was forced to resign. Her return to the cabinet, as Boris Johnson’s home secretary, would also have ended in her unceremonious removal if he had not decided to ignore the opinion of his ethics adviser and keep her in post despite a formal investigation finding evidence that she had bullied civil servants. Chris Philp – shadow home secretary
From going into the election knowing he might not even be an MP any more – Labour was eyeing up his Croydon South seat – Philp is now shadow home secretary, reward for his enthusiastic backing of Badenoch. It is also in part a logical step given Philp spent the final two years of Conservative government in the Home Office, as policing minister, having served time in the justice department and Treasury. Seen as generally on the right of the party, Philp is known for his dogged loyalty to his leader, and a willingness to vigorously defend whatever the policy of the day is. Alex Burghart – shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster/Northern Ireland secretary
Doubling up on a job, a sign of how depleted the Tory ranks are, one of Badenoch’s closest political allies will be shadowing Pat McFadden, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, whose wordy title puts him at the centre of decision making in government. Like Badenoch, part of the slightly niche 2017 contingent of new Tory MPs, Burghart is a key confidant of the new leader, and will be trusted to help coordinate policy and personnel. This is his first cabinet-level frontbench job, having previously held more junior roles in education, work and pensions and the Cabinet Office. James Cartlidge – shadow defence secretary
Not a surprise, with Cartlidge continuing in a job he had done since the election, having previously been minister for defence procurement in government. A Badenoch supporter, without being known as notably ideological, Cartlidge will be expected to quietly get on with a job that tends to have fewer stark ideological and policy differences between the parties than many other portfolios. Robert Jenrick – shadow justice secretary Is the role of shadow justice secretary a snub for the rival Badenoch defeated in the vote of Tory members? Or a noble olive branch after a bruising contest? Expect both views to be aired in briefings but, regardless, it gives a voice to the man who has reinvented himself as a leading voice of the Tory right.
A former corporate solicitor, Jenrick began his career as a largely on-message centrist, nicknamed “Robert Generic”, and moved through the ranks to become housing minister. His first brush with controversy came when he lost the job after becoming embroiled in a scandal about planning-related conflicts of interest. His move to the party’s right seemingly began when he was immigration minister for Sunak, a post from which he resigned over what he saw as an over-liberal approach. As a leadership contender he positioned himself firmly on the populist and nativist-adjacent right, calling for near-zero net migration to the UK and linking immigration to crime. Laura Trott – shadow education secretary An early and voluble Badenoch backer – she has likened the new leader to Margaret Thatcher – Trott has been rewarded with the shadow education post, just in time to respond in the Commons to the government’s announcement of an increase in university tuition fees.
A former political adviser who worked in No 10 under David Cameron, Trott entered the Commons in 2019 via the ultra-safe Sevenoaks constituency, and rose through the frontbench ranks to serve as chief secretary to the Treasury under Sunak, which saw her attend cabinet. Trott is viewed as a more centrist Tory. She held a very junior post under Boris Johnson before joining the wave of resignations from his crumbling government. She then backed Sunak to be leader. Ed Argar – shadow health secretary
This is another appointment that can be filed under “un-showy rather than ideological”, and in a brief where voters tend to care much more about results than stunts. A barely known figure to the public at large, Argar, who supported Jenrick in the leadership contest, has been an MP since 2015 and has diligently filled a series of government roles including health, the Treasury and the justice department. Kevin Hollinrake – shadow housing and communities secretary
Another close Badenoch ally who is nonetheless seen as more centrist in his views, Hollinrake has spent nearly a decade as an MP, with his ministerial roles all at the business department. These included working with Badenoch as business secretary, and as the face of the government’s response to the Post Office IT scandal, for which he won praise for a calm and collegiate approach. Victoria Atkins – shadow environment secretary
Probably the most prominent centrist to have supported Jenrick, whose campaign repeatedly highlighted her as a sign of his supposedly broad appeal, Atkins stays in the cabinet, but with a move from health to the somewhat less prominent role of environment. An experienced hand, who will seek to contrast her largely rural Lincolnshire constituency to the outer London equivalent of Steve Reed, the environment secretary, Atkins has been on the Tory frontbench for seven years now, most recently as health secretary under Sunak. Andrew Griffith – shadow business secretary
While this is a big brief, not least because it was previously Badenoch’s own department, the millionaire former media executive will be annoyed that after his very public support for the new boss, she gave the Treasury job to a former opponent, Stride. A longtime Conservative insider, whose London townhouse was used as the base for Johnson’s Tory leadership campaign, Griffith became an MP in 2019 and swiftly moved into government jobs at a series of departments, including the Treasury. Claire Coutinho – shadow energy secretary
Another close Badenoch ally – Countinho introduced Badenoch at her campaign launch event – and another continuity appointment. Coutinho, an MP only since 2019, spent a year as energy secretary and went on to shadow Ed Miliband in the job after the election. While not notably as ideological as her new boss, Coutinho will be happy to push the government over Badenoch’s professed scepticism at the pace of net zero targets, which could be a key battleground for the new Tory team. She is also shadow equalities minister, another notable Badenoch area of interest. Helen Whately – shadow work and pensions secretary
One of the shadow ministers more notably from the centre of the party, Whately was among those who resigned from Johnson’s dissolving government and sat out the Liz Truss interregnum from the backbenches. She did, however, back Badenoch. Whately’s ministerial career was mainly spent in the health department, including as care minister during Covid. She moved to take the work and pensions brief after the election loss, and has been retained. Gareth Bacon – shadow transport secretary
In a distinct break from the succession of names that could be seen as broadly uncontroversial, the Orpington MP and former London assembly member is enthusiastic about culture war issues, arguably keener even than his new leader. A member of the ultratraditionalist Common Sense Group of Tory MPs, Bacon particularly rails at what he once called attempts to “rewrite our history, indoctrinate our children with anti-British propaganda and impose an alternative worldview”. This could also mean the Tory transport brief continuing on the culture war direction seen at the end of the Sunak period. Stuart Andrew – shadow culture secretary
Andrew, who was the MP for the West Yorkshire constituency of Pudsey from 2010 before making a “chicken run” move to Daventry, in Northamptonshire, for the 2024 election, is back on familiar ministerial turf after filling in as shadow chief whip, having been sports minister in the culture department under Sunak. In that role, Andrew, who is gay, wore a rainbow OneLove armband at the 2022 Qatar World Cup as he watched England play Wales. Alan Mak – shadow science secretary
A place at the top table at last for a longtime junior minister and then shadow minister, who has been rewarded for his diligence and his very public support for Badenoch. A former lawyer whose parents moved to the UK from Hong Kong and ran a takeaway restaurant, before becoming an MP in 2015 Mak was a campaigner about child hunger and school breakfast clubs. Jesse Norman – shadow Commons leader
This is perhaps a surprise return to the frontbench for a Conservative stalwart who has twice previously quit the ministerial life – from the Treasury in 2019 and then a year ago from the Department for Transport, when he said he wanted to focus on his Herefordshire constituency. Perhaps this is in part a reward for Norman describing Jenrick’s speech to the Conservative conference as “lazy, mendacious, simplistic tripe”. Norman is also a much-praised author, with books including titles about Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, and most recently a historical novel. Andrew Bowie – shadow Scotland secretary
The West Aberdeenshire MP, another keen Badenoch supporter, is simultaneously promoted from his junior energy department shadow role – but also keeps that job, in another example of doubling up. Mims Davies – shadow Wales secretary
Davies will be shadowing the Wales job from Westminster and her very un-Welsh seat of East Grinstead and Uckfield, after the Tories’ complete wipeout in Wales. A backer of Cleverly, she is also shadow minister for women. Rebecca Harris The first appointment to emerge – after her predecessor as chief whip, Stuart Andrew, tweeted his congratulations on Sunday afternoon – Harris is a longstanding MP and a veteran of the whips’ office but largely unknown outside parliament.
Formerly a publishing industry executive, she has represented the Essex constituency of Castle Point since 2010 and has been a whip of varying seniority for seven years. She now has the tricky task of keeping the Conservatives’ 121 MPs, only a third of whom voted for Badenoch, in line. Nigel Huddleston A committed Badenoch supporter, and MP for Droitwich and Evesham – formerly Mid Worcestershire – since 2015, Huddleston moves from being number three in the shadow Treasury team to become party co-chair.
As a former remain backer, and a patron of the centrist Tory Reform Group, one of his tasks will be to reassure more moderate Conservative MPs and members that Badenoch’s party is a broad church. Dominic Johnson The other co-chair, Johnson is a wealthy financier and Tory party donor who, in contrast with Huddleston, is more closely linked to the right of the party.
Johnson co-founded the now defunct Somerset Capital Management with Jacob Rees-Mogg, and was made a peer by Liz Truss so he could serve as a minister in her government – which then collapsed about three weeks later. Rishi Sunak, however, kept Johnson in his post. • This article was amended on 5 November 2024. Stuart Andrew is no longer the MP for Pudsey as stated in an earlier version.