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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
John Crace

Sir Jim Dim swaps being a failed grandee for new role as cabinet stooge

James Cleverly
Fistpump moment? James Cleverly joins Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet as shadow housing secretary. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

All hail our hero’s return! The past 12 months have not been kind to James Cleverly. A man who was used to being the most important person in almost every room he entered. Not so much these days. It was bad enough when the Tories were heavily defeated in the last election. Even Jimmy Dimly had seen that one coming. But the final straw had been the inability of his own supporters to count. Come the leadership election, his campaign team had accidentally voted him into third place in a failed bid to undermine Kemi Badenoch. Out of the race before it had even really got going.

Old habits had died hard for Jimmy. Turning left on to every aircraft he boarded, only for an embarrassed steward to glance at his boarding pass and redirect him to economy. Automatically getting into the back seat of every car and wondering why it wasn’t going anywhere. It still took him a while to notice that he no longer had a driver. Doomed to get caught in traffic like the little people. The red box that he had kept as a souvenir now used only to house the shopping list he had been given.

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