Shadow cabinet reshuffle: what to expect | with Lord Goodman

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0:37Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Oscar Edmondson and I'm joined today by James Heal and Lord Goodman. Now Parliament returns next week so we thought we'd do a little bit of a Tory party health check. We've got shadow cabinet reshuffles to consider, Georgia Maloney and Kemi Badenock and lots more in between. But Paul, perhaps to start with you. Are you optimistic about when Parliament returns? It does seem as though Kemi Bainock and her Tory party are in a stronger position than they were this time last year. Yes, I am. Although it has to be said, the reason has nothing to do with the Conservative headline polling rate, which is much the same.

1:16But it really rests on two things. One is Kemi Bainock's own pretty robust ratings. and there's reason to think that where she goes today, the rest of the party may at some point follow. The second thing, really, which has been very helpful to the Conservatives, has been the decline over a period of time of reforms poll rating. So from where would they have been in September 2025, high 20s, even low 30s, to somewhere in the mid-20s. And Nigel Farage has not had an entirely easy summer. And so you're beginning to see the three main parties kind of converging on about 23%, 24%. And the Greens and the Lib Dems converging on a rather lower rating.

2:03The question really is, what happens when voters get nearer an election? Because protesting is understandable, particularly in year one, year 2025. five but i think as you get nearer the election there are a lot of people who are angry with the system but have something to lose there's a lot of people who are angry with the system who don't feel they have anything to lose but people who do feel they have something to lose will i think be a bit more careful in an election year whenever that comes than they were in the immediate aftermath of an election. So even leaving my party bias aside, I am pretty optimistic on Kemi Badeknock's behalf.

2:48Well, James, on that reform point, a Tory reform pact, endlessly spoken about, but it is looking probably at this point in time more unlikely than it's ever sort of seemed, not least since Kemi Badeknock apparently got the nudge from Georgia Maloney to totally discount that as a potential strategy. There's a few things there. I mean, first of all, there's this intriguing story in the Times about Maloney supposedly saying that it was inadvisable for Kemi to pursue a pact with reform. I think a lot of people in reform were surprised by that, given she herself is a right-wing coalitionist. So that was then removed from the Times article.

3:23Obviously, it was one of the most Times-based suspected journalists who did the story. So I wonder what went on in terms of the briefing of that account. It's always difficult when you're reporting what two people said in a room together. But I think the more substantive point is about, yes, will there be a pact of some kind? And I think it's a point that Paul has often made before, which is about you need the two principles to agree. And it seems that in Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, you've got a bit of an adversarial relationship. I've just been reading Lord Ashcroft's book about Nigel Farage where he talks about an encounter between the two in May 2024 where Kemi accused Nigel Farage of causing a Labour landslide and Farage retorted saying the last person who believed in the divine right to rule was Charles I and look how that ended up, according to that account.

4:02But I think it's fair to say that Kimi Bainock has very much set her face against that, whereas other people in the party would not be so minded. I think it's quite interesting, actually. We're talking about 12 months on. It does seem that the centre of gravity within the party has shifted in a more hostile reform direction. I spoke to Jacob Rees-Mogg the other day for this book that I'm currently writing, and he said that his view is always you should build bridges rather than cross them, in the sense that maybe form a pact together rather than going over to one side, and that obviously sort of burns bridges on both sides.

4:28So I think that the party is now, in some ways, in a more anti-reform spirit. I don't think there's going to be any kind of deal or anything before an election. I think that given the bad blood that exists between the two sides, partly going back to 2019, partly also because of a range of different issues and factors and personalities, it seems unlikely this side of an election. In terms also about why the Conservative strategy, there was a really interesting report in The Telegraph this week suggesting that Stephen Gilbert, Lord Gilbert, one of Henry Wain-Denock's three most important divisors, along with Mark McGuinness and Henry Newman, was potentially suggesting that there was maybe sort of two million votes who voted for the Liberal Democrats or Labour potentially up for grabs.

5:05And I think that that is an interesting potential signal of where the shift strategy could occur. There was a very, I thought, eye-catching analogy in Robert Colville's Sunday Times column a few weeks ago, where he talks about the ice cream trucks on a seafront, where you might have a two-mile-long seafront, and both ice cream trucks invariably will converge on the same point to battle over the same amount of turf. And I think that's very much been the KBNC strategy since 2024, in a sense of not really taking issue with the arguments of reform or the critiques, but merely about how you achieve that, the how, the plan, the purpose.

5:33and maybe there were some in the pub where you think, hang on a sec, is that reformed bloc going anywhere? It seems more solid than many thought and actually there could be lots of Labour voters or Libyan voters to be won and I think London is the example here where you saw lots of leaflets going out in places like Bromley, Vote Conservative to stop reform. That message really worked in London so I wonder if that might have some use elsewhere in the country as well. Paul, I mean there's lots of... People are a lot more optimistic about Cammy Badenock nowadays but there are still sort of some outstanding questions.

6:01What do you want to see from her when Parliament returns next week? Well, we are going to see, apparently, a reshuffle. That's rather more important than anything I'd like to see, in the sense that a complaint that one hears is that voters still don't sufficiently know what Conservative policies are or who the spokespeople are, what the Conservatives really do in government. I think a lot of that is to do with the fearful drubbing that they or we took in 2024 and the voters' unwillingness to listen. But shadow cabinet these days really is, I think, a bit of a varied game. because if you're going to be an effective shadow cabinet minister in this age of social media plus conventional media and you're operating from a smaller parliamentary party you have to work fantastically hard and be pretty able and actually have something that's driving you have something to say so I thought quite a good example this summer of someone who did have something to say even though it didn't cause a sort of big splash, was the Claire Coutinho net zero policy, where she got off net zero without sounding, from the point of view of a voter who's concerned about the environment, as though the Conservatives wanted to return to the Dark Ages.

7:23So there'd be a kind of mix of gas and renewables and more nuclear. And I think that she was relying on the argument that to go the extra mile to net zero, it's fantastically expensive. and not particularly environmentally beneficial. And her arguments sort of, I think, insofar as these arguments can, sort of stood up. Obviously, the people who liked Net Zero didn't like it, but she'd done an immense amount of work on it and had done very, very well. And so I think, you know, there is room in the reshuffle to bring on people who are sort of younger, hungrier, able, and have got something to say, like the Robbie Moron grooming gangs, or Katie Lamb who's now taken an interest I see in Northern Ireland.

8:10These are the kind of people who will throw every bit of energy they've got into their brief because they're hoping to get on and of course see the party do well. I always think it's interesting seeing what your opponents make of you and which of them they respect. I think people around Ed Miliband very much respect Claire Coutinho for what she did. I think that Claire Coutinho would be an obvious contender potentially if she was to be given one of the kind of four great offices of state roles to shadow. and I think speaking to people in government who've been in opposition before they say that the key thing in the modern age is attention can you grab the attention, can you cut through, think creatively and I certainly think the examples that Paul's just flagged there are examples of understanding where the public mood is the attention economy and trying to be creative as I keep saying it's not just about the House of Commons for better or worse, it's also about using it online it's used about being proactive and stuff and I think that given you've now got a rival in the form of reform and Robert Jemmerich doesn't show much like when he was a Tory doesn't show any compunction about opining on a whole range of public policy as part of his brief.

9:05I think that the Conservatives obviously need to be working sure they're using their game best in opposition. I was really struck by some of the names touted in the potential Telegraph reshuffle. I should say that from talking to people in Kimmy Bain-Knox team, they suggest that, well, it's more about personal circumstances, a bit like last summer when Edgar had to step down from health, than any kind of great purge or whatever. And, you know, you've got Helen Grant, who's standing down in the next election. She's the first MP to announce that. You've also got Clecetinho, who might be contended for motion, but is about to go and have another baby and I think anyone would accept that having a child is probably better than doing the stand-in at budget days.

9:35So what do they do with that? And I was quite interested in some of the names reported, including Harriet Cross who is on the left of the party. She gave the speech introducing Tom Tuganat at his launch. I actually thought gave the best speech of the campaign day, which maybe says something. But having someone like that, I think, countered some of the narrative that sprung up, given all the talk on candidate selections. As I reported, Grant Shapsworth blocked from standing again. Having someone like Harriet Cross, who is not necessarily from the kind of 92 group wing of the party, would probably be a good thing in showing that Bikini Bay Noc is serious about promotion being about it's partly your views but also partly your attitude as well which was the argument trotted out when Gavin Barwell lost the Conservative whip.

10:10It wasn't just about what he was saying on Twitter it was about how he was conducting himself. So I think people who've demonstrated good conduct demonstrated sound views and a willingness to play as part of a team would be sensible promotions in a reshuffle. Yeah I wonder what you make of that Paul because obviously Grant Shapp's example there but we've also heard that Penny Mordaunt might also be blocked from standing. Well it's not yet clear I think. Not yet clear. She's still waiting as the Times report said. But it's taking a long time. There are question marks around it. What do you make of the delay?

10:34Because there is a bit of a talent problem in the Conservative Party. And these are big personalities, people who've held high office. Do you think it's maybe a mistake not to let them back in? Just on the subject of candidates, I don't know if you've picked this up, James. I'm getting the sense that the list is rather smaller than it was hearing accounts of associations in, even these days, say for Conservative seats, getting fewer applications or fewer expressions of interest than you might expect. On the Grant Shapp's Penny Morda thing, I think it's really important to understand, one, what is happening to political parties, and two, the kind of status of Kemi Badenock.

11:15A statement of the obvious, I mean, James was citing some of the figures the other week. none of the political parties now are nationwide political parties in the sense they were in the 1990s let alone in the 1950s if you go back so therefore the leader is a kind of even bigger fish than 50 or 60 years ago in terms of the the party hierarchy and i think the tories collectively feel a bit kind of guilty about their leaders and they've got rid of a large number the membership will feel it's the MPs who did that but the membership did vote for Liz Truss which was turned out to be the greatest idea in the world so they've turned they feel very bruised and recognize that you know Kimmy Baden-Ock is now in charge of a smaller parliamentary party and therefore unity is vital and so for that reason I was really struck by the absence of noise about the Grant Shapps decision.

12:17I wrote about it, but very few others did at the time. Other people have begun to sort of come in, but characteristically they are rather on the older side, like Sir Malcolm Rifkind in The Times the other day. So I don't think there's much of opposition to what Kimmy Baden-Ock is doing. And she's doing it as a kind of bigger fish in a smaller pool. But Ray Penny Morden, we will see. I mean, I saw what Kimmy Maynard said in Edinburgh. She did not say that Penny Morton is on the list. She simply said that she hadn't been blocked. That might mean no decision has been taken. But when is a decision a decision?

12:56I mean, we will see. But I think were Penny Morton not to be allowed on, that would create bigger waves than Grant Shapps. And I would agree with that, you know, and I think that Penny Morton, but for six votes, could have taken on Richard Sinek and probably would have been conservative leader in 2022, in my view, had I think a handful of people switched. She would have beat – anyone would have beaten Rishi Sinek, I think, in that final too, given the state of the membership over Boris Johnson. But in terms of the noise, Paul is absolutely right. And I'm struck by how little noise has been on things such as when Kevin Baynot gave her big net zero speech last year.

13:29People at the Conservative Environment Network very much were not a huge dissenting voice as they might have been under the government of the last 14 years. And I think that that does show there's been a huge amount of effort behind the scenes, It's partly easier with a smaller party and partly easier in opposition, but keeping the whole team together. It speaks to the kind of tortoise rather than hare approach on things like European Convention of Human Rights. You know, rather than having reform going, right, we're going to have a referendum, they adopted a serious piece of work and sort of took their time on that.

13:54And I think that, you know, talking to Conservative, some of your peers, literally peers, Paul, you know, she's much better at doing small gestures like writing to thank the hereditaries for their service when the bill passed in the Lords. it feels much more like a team than it did I think maybe 15 so years ago or under the sort of hay years when that was the first opposition after long spelling government she's trying to take people close and doing things like dinners at Nick Steiner and then at the Nick Dungey 2 group she's doing the small things John Glenn I think is doing a better job as parliamentary private secretaries to her and I think that that all will stick together which is why it's so important to kind of use the media opportunities she gets sensibly rather than I think than that somewhat somewhat fortunate Today program interview, which we talked about two weeks ago, where she was defending a quite controversial candidate.

14:39Wonderful. Well, we all eagerly anticipate the shadow cabinet reshuffle next week. Thank you so much, James. Thank you, Paul. And thank you for listening.

15:03We'll be right back.