Where on earth is James Cleverly?

Where in the world is James Cleverly?

The former home and foreign secretary and one-time Tory leadership hopeful was brought back on to the Conservative frontbench as shadow housing secretary by Kemi Badenoch last summer, with her saying it was “an opportunity to bring back a very very talented colleague”.

“It’s about bringing back experience,” said Badenoch at the time. “James is a former foreign and home secretary, former party chairman and he has a lot more experience than anyone on Labour’s front bench.” That was seven months ago. Has anyone seen him since?

By Rats in a Sack’s back-of-a-fag-packet calculations, since being appointed Cleverly – long seen as one of the Conservatives’ few competent media communicators – has 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.

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Wherever can he be? The most generous of the possible reasons for Cleverly’s invisibility Rats has heard is that Cleverly was appointed specifically to shadow Angela Rayner, one of Labour’s best communicators. Now Rayner is – for the time being – gone, and the housing portfolio is held by the largely unknown Steve Reed, Cleverly is needed less, although as a pugnacious all-round performer, that seems unlikely.

The second possible reason is that Cleverly’s ambitions lie elsewhere. The Conservatives have yet to name their candidate for the next London mayoral election in 2028 and last October Cleverly said: “I’d be stupid not to think about it”.

But the third and most persistent rumour is that Cleverly remains at odds with Badenoch over the policy that she has put front and centre of her leadership: a commitment to leaving the European Court of Human Rights. Cleverly was opposed to leaving the ECHR during the 2024 leadership contest, and on his return to the frontbench last year still didn’t sound all that enthusiastic about leaving.

During his leadership campaign, Cleverly said his party needed to be “more normal” and before his appointment last year warned the Conservatives against copying Reform UK’s policies. How’s that going?

Last month, when Andy Street, the former West Midlands mayor, and Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, launched a new group within the party for centrist and centre-right voters, Badenoch told them to “get out of the way” and boasted that “my Conservative party has moved to the right every day since I became leader”. No wonder Cleverly’s gone AWOL!