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

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........

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