Who is James Cleverly?

Shadow home secretary has pitched himself as the pragmatist, centrist candidate capable of uniting the party

The shadow home secretary and Army reservist seeking to become the next leader of the Conservative Party has pitched himself as the pragmatist candidate.
The MP for Braintree served in the Cabinet of the three previous prime ministers, and has held two of the four great offices of state.
Mr Cleverly has pitched himself as the centrist, unity candidate to lead the Conservatives into the next election.
In contrast to other candidates to the Right of the party, the shadow home secretary has said that Liberal Democrat voters and Labour voters should be wooed back to the Tories, as well as Reform voters.
Casting himself as the candidate of pragmatism, he urged the Tories not to act as a “pressure group of a think tank”, adding: “Sacrificing pragmatic government in the national interest on the altar of ideological purity is not Conservative.”
Among his early policy pitches are a commitment to raising defence spending to three per cent of GDP as soon as possible, as well as delivering more homes by the “densification” of urban areas rather than on the green belt.
Mr Cleverly first entered politics in 2007 as a member of the London Assembly for Bexley and Bromley, before being elected as an MP in 2015.
He was appointed as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in 2018 before becoming co-chairman, and became Brexit minister in 2019.
It was then that he announced his intention to run to replace Theresa May, but withdrew his candidacy shortly afterwards.
Mr Cleverly’s first secretary of state job was as Education Secretary, a job he was handed by Boris Johnson in the final days of his premiership. He held the position for less than two months.
He was then given the foreign secretary role by Liz Truss and held on to it when Rishi Sunak became prime minister. He went on to replace Suella Braverman as home secretary when she was forced to quit as home secretary last November.
The shadow home secretary was born in Lewisham, south-east London, in a hospital where his mother worked as a midwife. She had come to the UK from Sierra Leone to work in the NHS.
Mr Cleverly married Susannah, known as Susie, Sparks in 2000, and they have two sons.
Mrs Cleverly was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021 and underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy and a single mastectomy.
She finished treatment in April 2023 and is now cancer-free.
Mr Cleverly has done fundraising work for cancer charities in the wake of his wife’s diagnosis, including the 100 press-ups a day challenge for every day in April.
Mr Cleverly voted leave in the 2016 referendum, and served as a Brexit minister. While foreign secretary, he told Brussels that he always believed friendly ties would be “the eventual outcome of Brexit”.
Alleged comments from Mr Cleverly came back to bite him in his role as home secretary, after Yvette Cooper told the Commons that he had privately called the Tories’ flagship Rwanda policy “bats – – t”.
He was also accused by a Labour MP of having called the constituency of Stockton North a “sh- – hole” in the Commons in November. He denied the allegation but apologised for using “unparliamentary language” which he claimed was directed at the MP.
He also faced calls to resign after a joke he made at a Christmas social event about spiking his wife’s drink with Rohypnol. A spokesman for Mr Cleverly said that he apologised for what had intended to be “an ironic joke”.