Fresh from chastising Labour for not involving Britain more deeply in another American misadventure in the Middle East, Kemi Badenoch is reportedly planning a ‘root and branch’ shadow cabinet reshuffle. Those most at risk are said to be her top team of Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride, Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel and Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp.
For Lam, there are plenty of reasons to defect to Nigel Farage’s party
The intention, the Daily Mail suggests, is to promote younger MPs ‘to energise the battered Tory brand’. Stride is said to ‘lack energy’, Patel ‘reminds voters of record levels of migration’, and Philp is believed to ‘no longer [be] fully focused on the job at hand’. None of these is a surprise.
Stride has largely been an absent Shadow Chancellor. As a leadership rival, his appointment was a sign of Badenoch’s disinterest in economics – she claimed last year that politics was now all about culture – and he responded with a similar disdain for his brief. Similarly, as the Home Secretary who presided over both the Boriswave and the explosion in small boat arrivals, Patel was a busted flush long before Badenoch appointed her. Any attempt to move on from 14 years of Tory failure was always going to be difficult with her in such a prominent position. By contrast, Philp has proven an energetic Shadow Home Secretary, with something of the prefect about him. But having been a Home Office minister, there was always a sense he was running against his own record. By clearing all of them out, an opportunity arises to promote fresher faces.
CCHQ has apparently been ‘monitoring’ the 2024 intake of MPs for ‘their ability to cut through to young audiences online’. By their metrics, the best is Katie Lam, currently a Shadow Whip. This isn’t just a recognition of her talent, but is driven by worries she might be off to Reform.
For Lam, there are plenty of reasons to defect to Nigel Farage’s party. At last year’s locals, all of the wards in her Weald of Kent constituency went teal. Lam faces the very real prospect of being unemployed in three-and-a-half years if she stays Tory – no matter how many endearing videos of herself flipping pancakes and visiting local vineyards she puts up on Instagram. Having worked in both the Home Office and Number 10, she has exactly the sort of government experience of which Farage is in dire need. If she were to hold her nose and head to Millbank, she would be welcomed with open arms, and made a Reform star. Team Lam strenuously denies that she plans to become the thinking man’s Laila Cunningham, and follow her chum Robert Jenrick’s example.
Nonetheless, to keep Lam in the tent, Badenoch is said to be planning on promoting her to fill the space left by the ‘dead wood’ of the aforementioned trio. It seems a slam dunk: another defector bought off, a top team refreshed, a break made from the past, and a shadow cabinet kicked up the bottom. But Badenoch should be careful what she wishes.
I first identified Lam as one to watch in a ConservativeHome profile of her back in 2023. Having waded through the selections of endless identikit councillors and local favourites, Lam stood out: an ex-Spad, a former President of the Cambridge Union and Goldman Sachs employee who wrote musicals in her spare time. Out of all the 2024 hopefuls, she seemed like an obvious future leader; I obliquely advocated for her running to replace Rishi Sunak, straight after her election, as Ruth Davidson had done immediately after becoming an MSP. She was untainted by the outgoing dumpster fire, and clearly due for Big Things.
Her success since entering the Commons has proven my suspicions right. She’s head and shoulders above most on the Tory benches in terms of intellect, commitment and ambition. That she wasn’t immediately put in Badenoch’s Shadow Cabinet was a mistake, a small-minded deference on the leader’s part to time served and loyalty rather than the best use of the slim resources available. As with the eventual elevation of Nick Timothy and Neil O’Brien, this is an example of Badenoch taking months to do what Jenrick was thought to intend immediately. Better late than never. But Lam has made an impression, especially through her eloquent and eye-catching speech on the rape gangs scandal last year.
Yet as Jenrick’s defenestration proved, there is little room for tall poppies in Badenoch’s Conservatives. In the first few months after her election, her erstwhile rival filled the void Badenoch left with her disdain in policy, media appearances and sandwiches. He demonstrated to Tories what they were missing; the leadership chatter grew louder as the party fell further behind Reform.
Similarly, if Lam were promoted, one suspects it wouldn’t be long until she was challenging Badenoch for the affections of her party, shooting up the ConHome league table, winning more plaudits for speeches, revelling in profiles, and being talked up as the obvious replacement if the Conservatives endure another shellacking in May. Lam might soon seem to be the cuckoo in the shadow cabinet nest. Could Badenoch handle that? Look how things went with Jenrick.
Team Lam strenuously denies that she plans to defect to Reform
Undoubtedly, Badenoch’s position has strengthened. Her approval ratings have shot up since her Budget response speech went viral. She has finally grasped how to do PMQs; with a more proactive team around her, she is showing that the Tories are not yet wholly exhausted. But she remains the leader who took her party from first to third, who left the space open to Farage with her inaction, and who, as her America-brained response to the Iran crisis has showed, remains trapped by the sort of stale thinking that the Right’s big brains disdain. She is the past; Lam is the future.
In which case, perhaps Badenoch should reassess whether she should fight so hard to keep Lam in the Tory tent. As with Jenrick, her defecting to Reform would remove her as leadership contender. Yes, it would mean losing one of the party’s few burgeoning talents, and be a sign to the young and bright on the Right that throwing in their lot with Farage might be the best course of action. But Badenoch would at least get to stay on as leader a little longer, in the absence of an alternative.
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