James Cleverly discovered alive and well in California

“Where on earth is James Cleverly?” asked Rats in a Sack back on February 13, as we questioned how the former home and foreign secretary and one-time Tory leadership hopeful had all but vanished since being brought back on to the Conservative frontbench as shadow housing secretary by Kemi Badenoch last summer.

At that time, since being appointed, Cleverly – long seen as one of the Conservatives’ few competent media communicators – had done just five weekday morning broadcast rounds (including one on his first full day back in the shadow cabinet), one Sunday broadcast round, one Question Time and one Peston, as well as a shift filling Nick Ferrari’s ample seat on his LBC show, since returning to the front bench.

Now we know exactly where Cleverly was when we posed the question – in California on a lengthy jolly on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dime! The shadow housing secretary has just filed his latest update to the House of Commons’ register of members’ interests, showing that between January 29 and February 22 he was in Los Angeles and Sacramento “as a fellow and guest lecturer” at the expense of The Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, a think tank co-founded by the beefy Hollywood actor.

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The total value of the trip, according to Cleverly’s update, was a whopping £23,898,89, including £16,044 on flights for the MP and his wife, £806 on car rental and £3,743 on an apartment at the University of Southern California in LA, among others.

“I visited Los Angeles and Sacramento accompanied by Lady Cleverly, as the guests of The Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy,” he wrote. “I was invited as a fellow and guest lecturer and to meet with the British and American Business Council, as well as notable figures and politicians in the Housing, Building, Regulation and Political sphere.”

Various posts on social media also show that Cleverly took part in a roundtable discussion at the Consulate General of Hungary in Los Angeles, among other things presumably of great importance to his housing brief in the UK and constituents in Braintree.

Still, at least that’s one mystery cleared up. The other might be why Badenoch continues to bother having him in her shadow cabinet…