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'He taps into British frustrations': James Cleverly fires warning shot at Kemi Badenoch over Farage's threat to Tories
11 December 2024, 18:53 | Updated: 11 December 2024, 19:08
James Cleverly has fired a warning shot at leader Kemi Badenoch over the Tory threat from Nigel Farage.
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The former Conservative leadership hopeful has opened up for the first time on how his team botched the numbers and let the Tory crown slip through his fingers.
The Former Foreign Secretary was unexpectedly booted out of the race after he failed to get enough support to get into the final two - leaving Robert Jenrick to face off against Kemi Badenoch instead.
In an interview with LBC, he said:
- He would have won the Tory leadership if he’d gone through to the final round
- He doesn’t regret taking a tougher ‘Frank Underwood’ style to his campaign to win
- Kemi Badenoch must offer solutions to combat Nigel Farage’s effective communication
- His leadership rivals worked behind the scenes for months in advance when he was in government had the upper hand - as they started far earlier than him
And he had a message for the Tory leader, warning her not to underestimate the power of the Reform leader.
Mr Cleverly told LBC that “Kemi and I agree on a huge amount of stuff” and she would continue to “put pressure on the Labour party, that’s the primary job”.
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JAMES CLEVERLY INTERVIEW
But he added: “But she’s also got to recognise that Nigel Farage is a very, very effective communicator.
“He’s very good at tapping into frustrations and very, very good at amplifying some of the genuine concerns that are experienced by the British people,” Cleverly continued.
It was up to the Tories, he said, to come up with genuine solutions to the country’s problems, rather than just criticising Labour, who were “making catastrophic decisions that are hurting and will continue to hurt the British people.”
Mr Cleverly added: “He has never been good at offering up solutions to those concerns and problems.
“That is always going to be the responsibility of us as a party, and that makes our job a little bit harder.
“Pointing at problems is easy," Cleverly added.
“Coming up with solutions is a lot harder. We have to be good at both. He only has to do one of those two things.”
Mr Cleverly insisted the Tory leader was “up to the challenge” - and that after taking some time out, he’d be figuring out his political figure in the new year.
He admitted there was “loads of things that maybe we could have done differently” - and hinted that rivals like Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch had the heads up as they’d started earlier.
And he reflected on the hours when he lost out to secure a place in the final two of the Tory leadership contest - insisting he didn’t regret taking a more “Frank Underwood” approach to the race.
He said: “I don’t regret going to the [Boris Johnson] book launch, loads of my colleagues were there - Conservative MPs.
“Look, the point is this numbers were within the range that we predicted.
James O'Brien and Natasha Clark discuss Kemi Badenoch's decision to go in on immigration during PMQs
“One of my great frustrations, the plan was to get to conference, do well at conference, that bit had played out.
“I got the leading position coming out of conference in that first vote.
“‘A lot of people thought, ‘James is locked on now, he’s definitely going through to the final two. Who else do I want to put forward with him?’
“Our whipping operation kept showing that it was really tight, a three way split… a lot of MPs were keeping their voting intention to themselves.
“I kept saying, I don’t care, get me into the final two, if you want me to win, get me into the final two with a clear mandate.
“I knew the numbers were going to be tight.”
On what he would change about the race if he could start again, he added: “This is not an implied criticism of anybody else, but I was Home Secretary… I was trying to get re-elected.
“We has a genuine threat, we had immigration challenges.
“I thought… ‘I don’t have time for a third line of effort’.
“Afterwards, I was very conscious that a number of people that I was approaching behind the scenes, they said… well, I’ve already committed to someone else.
“I started from the back of the field, and worked my way to the front of the field.
“I don’t regret doing some of the more cynical, Frank Underwood style stuff, demanding people send me photos of their ballot papers, that kind of stuff.
“I wanted to bring us together rather than reinforce factionalism.
“Could I have done things differently? Of course.
“Would I have preferred to get to the final two and one? Obviously.”
