Tory Leader Badenoch Appoints Rivals Stride, Jenrick to Top Team

New Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch appointed former leadership rivals including Mel Stride and Robert Jenrick to her shadow cabinet, in an effort to unite the UK’s fractured opposition party.

(Bloomberg) — New Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch appointed former leadership rivals including Mel Stride and Robert Jenrick to her shadow cabinet, in an effort to unite the UK’s fractured opposition party.

Stride, a Tory moderate and former work and pensions secretary who was knocked out early in the leadership contest won by Badenoch, will be shadow chancellor. Priti Patel, the first candidate to be eliminated, was named shadow foreign secretary, while Robert Jenrick, ex-immigration minister and runner-up to Badenoch, was handed the role of shadow justice secretary.

Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly, who was also leadership candidates, were not named in the line-up.

The appointments come days after the Conservative Party announced Badenoch had won the ballot of grassroots members to take over from former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who led the Tories to an historic defeat in July’s general election. She now faces the challenge of bringing together a party that is deeply divided after 14 years in power that included Brexit and the pandemic.

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Badenoch played to the right wing of the party in her leadership bid, promising a smaller role for the state and a focus on cutting migration to the UK. Keeping fellow right-wingers such as Jenrick and Patel onside will help seal her image as a champion of the right, and stave off rival breakaway groups.

But while appealing to the right was enough to win Badenoch the final vote among party members, who tend to be more right-leaning than Conservative MPs and the wider electorate, she will now need to keep the moderate factions among the party’s 121 MPs in line, as well as try to win back voters who defected to more centrist parties.

Other appointments included:

• Chris Philp as shadow home secretary
• James Cartlidge as shadow defense secretary
• Claire Coutinho as shadow secretary for energy security and net zero
• Andrew Griffith as shadow business and trade secretary

Placing the likes of Stride in her shadow cabinet could help Tory centrists feel they still have a political home, though many will be watching for policy commitments which were thin on the ground during the leadership race. 

Jenrick has vowed to pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights, and his new role could give him the chance to continue with that project — though Badenoch said she will only support the policy if it can be shown to produce meaningful results in bringing migration down. 

As home secretary under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Patel oversaw the creation of the Tories’ controversial plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda. The policy was dropped by the incoming Labour government.

—With assistance from Ellen Milligan and Alex Wickham.