17 wild facts about Kemi Badenoch’s new Tory team

LONDON — Whoever said opposition was boring? 

New U.K. Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch has picked her shadow Cabinet, responsible for taking the fight to Labour after the Tories suffered a massive kicking in July’s general election.

Their July election rout means the once-mighty party of government has been reduced to just 121 MPs. That leaves Badenoch with limited choices about who covers what brief.

As she tries to quell divisions and form a united front against Labour, POLITICO dug into the lesser-known sides of Badenoch’s merry band of bigwigs.

Shadow Chancellor: Mel Stride 

Stride takes on the economics brief for Badenoch, but what you really need to know is that he’s … a qualified tour guide?

The former Treasury Committee chair (and failed Conservative leadership candidate) told the House magazine in 2023 that he liked to take groups of tourists for a stride (sorry not sorry) around iconic British institutions including the Tower of London and Stonehenge.

And he once managed to split a tour group up and lose some of its members. “They all came together marvelously right at the end,” he recalled. “So I wasn’t very good at keeping people together, but I had a lot of fun.” That’s the main thing!

Shadow Home Secretary: Chris Philp

Chris Philp certainly knows how to make audiences snort. But when you’re an actual policing minister, it’s probably best not to … joke about your colleague’s past cocaine use at a charity dinner focused on stopping crime. P

hilp may have thought he was having harmless fun while pulling the leg of then-Cabinet minister Michael Gove. His audience didn’t seem to see the funny side.

Shadow Foreign Secretary: Priti Patel

Patel’s got plenty of diplomatic experience honed from … pretending to be foreign secretary.

The experienced former Cabinet minister was fired as Theresa May’s international development secretary after she held unauthorized meetings with Israeli politicians including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while on a family holiday, and then gave a misleading account of it all.

She was ordered back from an official visit in Kenya to be sacked by May, and Westminster obsessives had hours of fun tracking her flight home.

Shadow Defense Secretary: James Cartlidge 

Cartlidge, who will now be standing up for Britain’s armed forces, seems to have turned his own workplace into a war zone back in the 1990s.

He once worked as a kitchen porter for a 19-hour shift at Buckingham Palace during the late Queen Elizabeth II’s staff Christmas party. Accidentally spilling an entire bottle of wine over one of the expensive carpets, he covered up the mess by relocating a Ming vase.

Nobody spoke of it again until Cartlidge fessed up in the House of Commons … after the queen had died.

Shadow Justice Secretary: Robert Jenrick 

Jenrick lost the Tory leadership race to Kemi Badenoch, but at least he had an actual opponent in this election.

While studying at Cambridge, Jenrick stood to be president of St John’s College student union. Despite initially running unopposed, he somehow lost one round to a candidate named “re-open nominations,” or “RON.”

Shadow Commons Leader: Jesse Norman

Norman, a veteran of the David Cameron years, should get on just great with new shadow Cabinet colleague Jenrick, particularly after branding his Conservative conference speech last month “lazy, mendacious, simplistic tripe.”

Shadow Energy Secretary: Claire Coutinho

Coutinho is a great survivor of the Rishi Sunak administration, staying in the energy brief despite the Tories being kicked out of office.

Sadly, her career in reality TV didn’t go quite so well. Appearing on “The Taste,” a Nigella Lawson-hosted cooking show in 2015, Couthino was booted out after just two weeks for flunking a dish of braised beef and mashed potato.

Shadow Environment Secretary: Victoria Atkins 

Atkins better get swotting up on sewage statistics as she takes on the environment brief. As a government minister, she once struggled to explain how many dentists would benefit from a new program she had been sent out to sell. And in an excruciating exchange with the BBC as policing minister, she forgot how many police officers Britain had on the beat.

 “You are a Home Office minister — wouldn’t it be a good idea to have the figures?” host Nick Robinson barked. “It would be Nick, thank you,” she conceded.

Shadow Health Secretary: Ed Argar

Argar will hope to last longer in this position than he managed in his previous senior post. In the dying days of the government of Liz Truss (remember her?), he served as chief secretary to the Treasury for a whopping … 11 days (also known as 0.22 Liz Trusses.)

Shadow Scotland Secretary: Andrew Bowie 

Always check who’s copied into an email. It’s a message Bowie learnt the hard way when, as chief of staff to a member of the Scottish Parliament in 2016, he called a Scottish National Party councilor a “flipping woman” — and copied her in.

That resulted in a “full and unreserved apology” from Bowie which … spelled the woman’s name wrong.

Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary and Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Alex Burghart 

Burghart has been an MP since 2017, and likes to dream big.

The man in the shadow Northern Ireland brief stood for parliament in 2015 against future Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, then a mere backbench MP in Islington North.

Asked for the first thing he’d do if elected, Burghart replied: “Dance a jig (and try to resuscitate Jeremy Corbyn).” The seat remained solidly Labour.

Shadow Communities Secretary: Kevin Hollinrake

Nothing like taking on a national treasure to really make yourself popular.

As footballer Marcus Rashford campaigned for more low-income kids to get free school meals during the Covid-19 pandemic, Hollinrake decided to go studs-up. “Where they can, it’s a parent’s job to feed their children,” he curtly tweeted.

Rashford quickly went for a slide-tackle, urging Hollinrake “to talk to families before tweeting.” Good advice.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary: Helen Whately

How to shake off the Conservative Party’s image of representing the privileged elite? Put a horse-riding enthusiast in charge of scrutinizing the welfare system.

To be fair, Whately’s equestrian past is genuinely impressive. She competed for Surrey nationally and was a member of the British Junior Eventing Squad. At university (Oxford, obvs), she captained the riding team and even won two half-blues — even then into Tory colors, apparently. 

Shadow Culture Secretary: Stuart Andrew

Britain’s new “minister for fun” grew up in the Welsh village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Yes, it is really called that.

Tory Co-Chairman: Nigel Huddleston

Tasked with rebuilding a battered Tory party and reconnecting with the British public, Huddleston, is no stranger to answering the hard questions.

In an “about me” video for his website, the former Treasury minister dug deep on big issues like whether the chicken or egg came first and whether he’s a morning person or night owl. “Newsnight,” eat your heart out.

Chief Whip: Rebecca Harris 

As Comptroller of the Household (who comes up with these jobs?) Harris took part in King Charles III’s coronation procession.

“While walking down the aisle I was thinking ‘do no[t] trip or fall or hit something’,” she recalled.

On that measure, she entirely succeeded, and is therefore totally qualified for a top politics job.

Shadow Science Secretary: Alan Mak 

Unpack the Mak!

The ultra-loyal Conservative MP has (boo!) studiously avoided back-stabbing and infighting during his years in the House of Commons, and even got to carry the Olympic torch at the 2012 games for his work helping kids at risk of hunger. He must try harder in his new job if he wants to end up in more dubious listicles.