Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton has announced that he will not serve as shadow foreign secretary as the Tories seek to recover from their landslide election defeat.
Rishi Sunak, the Tory leader and former prime minister, unveiled his shadow cabinet with Andrew Mitchell given the role of scrutinising David Lammy, the foreign secretary, in place of Cameron.
Richard Holden, the chairman of the Conservative Party, also quit after facing heavy criticism during the election campaign for being parachuted into what was previously considered a safe seat. He has been replaced by Richard Fuller.
Kemi Badenoch, the frontrunner to succeed Sunak, has been appointed shadow levelling up secretary which will mean she faces Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, at the dispatch box. James Cartlidge has become shadow defence secretary and Edward Argar is shadow justice secretary.
Other leadership contenders have retained their briefs. James Cleverly is shadow home secretary, Victoria Atkins is shadow health secretary and Tom Tugendhat is shadow security minister.
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An analysis by The Times suggests that Tory centrists will be the dominant force in the forthcoming leadership contest after the right of the party was decimated by Reform.
A total of 51 of the survivors first backed moderate candidates during the Tory leadership contest in summer 2022 while 28 supported right-wing candidates.
• Who could replace Rishi Sunak? The Tory party leader candidates
Those re-elected Tory MPs who supported candidates on the moderate wing of the party significantly outnumber those backing candidates on the right.
Supporters of Penny Mordaunt, Sunak and Tugendhat, leading candidates from the party’s centrist wing, vastly outnumber those who first supported Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch or Liz Truss, all drawn from the party’s right, to succeed Boris Johnson in 2022.
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Those vying to replace Sunak as party leader are expected to start announcing their intention to run this week, with possible candidates having spent the weekend sounding out colleagues.
Sunak has said he will remain as Tory leader until the process to replace him has been agreed with a “collective consensus”. But he is likely to stand down if the contest is not over by the autumn.
Centrist Tory MPs are gearing up to resist the party shifting rightwards in the wake of its worst electoral defeat in history. On Monday the One Nation faction of Tory moderates met in Westminster to discuss the election and future of the party, with more than two dozen MPs in attendance.
The two leaders of the caucus, Damian Green and Matt Warman, were defeated in Thursday’s election and it is unclear who will replace them. Nonetheless MPs from the One Nation wing still remain the largest Tory faction in parliament, with some 31 of them re-elected.
To succeed, however, centrist Tories are keenly aware that winning the most support among MPs may not be enough to see their candidate win. Under existing leadership rules, two candidates are chosen by MPs before being presented to the party’s membership. The right need only get their candidate on the ballot to have a strong chance of grassroots supporters selecting them as leader.
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On Monday, Sir Simon Clarke, who was briefly levelling up secretary but lost his seat in the election, said he could envisage Nigel Farage joining the Conservative fold as a way to “reunify the centre-right”. He told LBC he would support Badenoch and Robert Jenrick and said: “The [general election] campaign failed to connect with the public. I think in truth, we failed to make a positive offer to voters.”
Twenty-five of the party’s MPs are also new, making their ideological profile less clear. Around half have been Tory councillors. Others include Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former chief of staff in Downing Street, and Katie Lam, a former special adviser to Braverman when she was home secretary.
