Rishi Sunak has appointed James Cleverly as home secretary in a move intended to repair relationships with senior police officers and reassure rightwing Tory MPs after the tumultuous tenure of Suella Braverman.
The MP for Braintree, who backed Liz Truss to become prime minister, was expected to hold urgent talks with the Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, after Braverman’s claims that the police were biased, Whitehall sources said.
Sunak’s decision to hand Cleverly his second great office of state is also meant to reassure traditional hard-right supporters of Braverman that they still have influence over key policies on immigration and policing.
In his first comments as home secretary, Cleverly said his two main priorities in the role would be to stop small boats crossing the Channel from France and to keep people safe.
“As the home secretary I am absolutely committed to stopping the boats as we promised, but also making sure that everybody in the UK feels safe and secure going about their daily business knowing that the government is here to protect them,” he said outside the Home Office’s main office in Westminster.
Asked if he wanted to distance himself from some of the provocative language used by Braverman, Cleverly replied: “Well, I intend to do this job in the way I feel best protects the British people and our interests.”
His decision to repeat Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats” will exasperate some Conservative commentators who believe it is a pledge that will be difficult to fulfil. More than 25,000 asylum seekers have crossed the Channel to the UK in small boats this year.
One ally of the new home secretary said: “Cleverly was a Brexiter before anyone had coined the term and was a key backer of the Rwanda plan under Boris [Johnson].”
Cleverly, 54, a genial presence in parliament’s bars and a solid media operator, has been credited with repairing relationships with senior civil servants in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office after damaging rows under Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Truss.
He enters the Home Office to face a challenging in-tray that will include managing the fallout of from a crunch supreme court decision on Wednesday about whether the government’s Rwanda deportation plan is legal.
There are mounting concerns about sexism within the police, claims that the Tories have undermined the police’s authority, rising crime rates and intense scrutiny of delays across the criminal justice system.
It is understood that a meeting has already been pencilled in with Rowley to establish their relationship.
Cleverly also faces some potentially embarrassing questions arising from his past candour. As the secretary of state overseeing online safety and drug policy, he will be reminded that as a new MP he confessed to looking at pornography and taking drugs in an interview with the BBC’s John Pienaar.
Any queries will be brushed off as past dalliances.
Cleverly will also be in charge of new “camps” to house asylum seekers, including one at the RAF base in Wethersfield in his own constituency. When the policy was first mooted in March, Cleverly said he had asked the immigration minister Robert Jenrick to re-examine the decision in a lengthy posting on Facebook.
“I highlighted the remote nature of the site, the limited transport infrastructure and narrow road network and that these factors would mean the site wasn’t appropriate for asylum accommodation,” he wrote.
Under collective responsibility, Cleverly has since accepted the proposals despite local opposition.
Senior Tories have claimed that he, like his previous mentor Johnson, treated the foreign secretary job like a “photoshoot” and was too easily influenced by civil servants.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a former Tory leader, told the Mail on Sunday in June: “Cleverly is a total wet rag who wants to fly out to China to kiss the backside of a regime responsible for shocking abuses of human rights.”
His appointment could also be seen as a way of preparing to face down demands from the Tory right that the UK should leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR) if the supreme court rejects the government’s appeal over its Rwanda policy.
Cleverly said in April that he was not convinced that leaving the ECHR was necessary to ensure the immigration system was robust, and that the UK had the clout to push for changes if needed.
Cleverly issued an unusual public appeal to Sunak over the summer to keep his job as foreign secretary in the next reshuffle.
He told the Aspen Security Forum in July that he would have to be dragged out of his job “with nail marks down the parquet flooring” after speculation he could be moved to the defence brief to replace Ben Wallace.
His comments were a departure from the normal ministerial practice of not commenting on reshuffles, and add further weight to reports that Sunak intends to make big changes to his top team before next year’s election.
“If anyone in the UK is watching, listening, particularly you, prime minister, I very much want to stay put … I very much want to stay put as foreign secretary. It’s a job that I love, I think it’s an important job,” he said.
Cleverly was born in Lewisham, south London in 1969. His mother, a midwife from Sierra Leone, worked in the NHS. His father, a surveyor, ran his own business.
He attended a private school in south-east London, completed a BA in hospitality management studies and set up his own digital publishing business. He is a lieutenant colonel in the army reserve and continues to volunteer.
Elected as a Conservative to the London assembly in 2008, Cleverly became a close ally of Johnson. He was one of only 30 guests at the wedding of Johnson and Carrie Symonds in May 2021.
With Braverman, a key figure of the Tory right, out of government, and David Cameron back in, questions have already been raised over whether the Conservatives will be able to unite in time for the next general election. The former prime minister is widely seen as part of the “one nation” moderate Tory caucus.
