James Cleverly has been MP for Braintree since 2015 and is one of the very few people to have held both of the great offices below prime minister, Foreign Secretary and then Home Secretary, in barely more than a year. He is affable, capable on his feet, and the question that hangs over him is whether the geniality was ever matched by weight.

His route was unusual and to his credit. He served for years in the Army Reserve, rising to lieutenant colonel, and sat on the London Assembly before Parliament, a proper apprenticeship rather than a fast track. As Foreign Secretary from 2022 he steadied a department after the Truss turbulence and reopened high level contact with Beijing, and as Home Secretary he signed a new treaty with Rwanda and pushed up the salary thresholds meant to cut legal migration. He reached the top and looked comfortable there.

The doubts are about seriousness. As Home Secretary in November 2023 he was accused of calling the constituency of Stockton North a word unfit for the chamber, denied the slur was aimed at the town, and apologised for unparliamentary language. Weeks later he apologised again, this time for joking at a Downing Street reception, on the day the government launched measures against drink spiking, that the secret to a long marriage was keeping your wife sedated with Rohypnol. As Foreign Secretary he had told gay football fans heading to Qatar to show a little flex and compromise and respect their hosts. None of these on its own is fatal. Together they describe a politician who reaches too easily for the flippant remark in jobs that are meant to be grave.

His record on the policy he is most associated with is thin in result. He fronted the Rwanda scheme as Home Secretary, signing a new treaty and steering the bill through the Commons, and it removed almost no one before the government fell. He was handed a flagship that did not work and defended it to the end.

The defining moment of his career so far was the 2024 leadership contest. He topped the penultimate ballot of MPs, the clear frontrunner, then lost votes overnight and was knocked out before the final two, in one of the odder results the party has produced. Kemi Badenoch left him off her first front bench, and he returned in July 2025 as Shadow Housing Secretary. He was knighted in 2025.

Cleverly is likeable, experienced and better in a crisis than several who outrank him in ambition, and a party short of talent needs people who can hold a great office without disgracing it. He is also the cautionary tale of charm as a ceiling, a man who got to the very top and left remarkably little behind, undone in the end by colleagues who liked him but would not, when it counted, trust him with the leadership.