Kemi Badenoch has carried out a reshuffle of her shadow cabinet, with Sir James Cleverly returning to the Conservative Party front bench.
The Tory leader has brought her former leadership rival back to the frontline to build party unity and bolster the party’s credibility.
A senior Tory source said Sir James would help “take the fight to this dreadful Labour government”.
Ms Badenoch made a series of changes to her top team on Tuesday, with the source adding that they “reflect the next stage of the party’s policy renewal programme and underline the unity of the party under new leadership”.
Sir James was appointed shadow housing secretary and will be Angela Rayner’s opposite number and go head to head with her in the Commons.
Despite reports that Robert Jenrick was gunning for his job, Sir Mel Stride stayed on as shadow chancellor in a blow to Ms Badenoch’s other main rival for the leadership.
Ex-foreign secretary Sir James was the most high-profile name appointed to the front bench on Tuesday. Other big names from the last Conservative government, such as Suella Braverman, were not called upon by Ms Badenoch. Sir James replaced Kevin Hollinrake, who will become Conservative Party chairman.
MP Stuart Andrew moved from his role in culture to the health brief, replacing the current shadow health secretary Ed Argar. Mr Argar was the first casualty of Ms Badenoch’s reshuffle, with the Tory leader thanking him for his service.
It had become a social media joke that searching Google for Ed Argar and his shadow cabinet role revealed only his appointment to the position, suggesting he had failed to cut through with the public and media.
His resignation letter, which was written on 9 July, cited an ongoing health issue after an illness last year.
A full list of changes is expected to be published on Tuesday evening.
The shadow cabinet reshuffle comes just eight months after Ms Badenoch was elected leader by Tory members and is an admission the party has been underperforming.
Even as she conducted her reshuffle, Ms Badenoch lost another defector to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Laura Anne Jones, a member of the Welsh Senedd, joined the party, following in the wake of two former Tory cabinet ministers, Jake Berry and David Jones.
Amid the continued rise of Reform UK, Ms Badenoch’s party has been unable to grab the agenda and get a clear message across. A spokesman for Mr Farage’s party said the reshuffle is “like moving deckchairs on the Titanic”.
Only a handful of her shadow cabinet ministers have been prominent publicly since joining the Tory top team, including Mr Jenrick, who has made a series of eye-catching videos exposing social problems in the UK.
After May’s disastrous local election results, as well as months of dire showings in the polls, Ms Badenoch hopes the reshuffle will shore up her authority ahead of the Tory conference in October.
Talk of a potential leadership challenge has been mounting, with communications consultant Guto Harri, who worked for Boris Johnson during his time in No 10, warning recently that a bid to replace her was “inevitable”.
In January, Ms Badenoch’s spokesman ruled out any reshuffle of her top team before the next general election.
A Labour source said: “After initially claiming her shadow Cabinet would be in place until the next election, Kemi Badenoch has already hit the panic button.
“The Tory leader can shuffle as many deckchairs as she likes, but it’ll still be the same old faces that were responsible for 14 years of failure. They crashed the economy and ran public services into the ground.
“The Conservatives haven’t changed. It’s the same old chaos.”
Sir James served as both foreign secretary and home secretary when the Conservatives were in power.
He stood as a candidate in last year’s Conservative leadership election, but lost out on the Tory top job ahead of the final heat between Ms Badenoch and her now-shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick.
Since the leadership contest, Sir James has returned to the Tory back bench as the MP for Braintree.
He has used his influential position as a former minister to warn against pursuing a populist agenda similar to Reform UK.
Appearing at the Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank last week, the senior Tory hit out at calls to “smash the system” and “start again from scratch”, branding them “complete nonsense”.
He also appeared to take a different position on net zero from party leader Ms Badenoch in a recent speech, urging the Conservatives to reject climate change “luddites” on the right who believe “the way things are now is just fine”.
