Tory James Cleverly quits Kemi Badenoch’s prime staff for London mayoral bid
Ex-Cabinet Minister James Cleverly said he was quitting Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet to launch a bid to be London Mayor in May 2028
James Cleverly wants to run to be mayor of London(Image: © 2026 PA Media, All Rights Reserved)
Top Tory James Cleverly has resigned from the shadow cabinet to allow him to be mayor of London.
The former Cabinet Minister said he was quitting Kemi Badenoch’s top team to launch a bid for City Hall in the May 2028 election. Labour’s Sadiq Khan is serving his third term as London Mayor – but has not declared whether he will seek another term.
In an op-ed for the Sunday Times, Mr Cleverly said: “I have told Kemi Badenoch that I will leave the shadow cabinet. Serving there has been a privilege, and I know there will continue to be strong voices around that table.
“But to run the most effective campaign possible, I must be free to speak about every aspect of London’s future and concentrate fully on winning this race.”
Mr Cleverly is a much bigger name than previous Tory candidates for City Hall, which included controversial London assemblywoman Susan Hall who was trounced by Mr Khan in 2024. He must still win the Conservative nomination to enter the race.
Mr Cleverly, who lost out to Ms Badenoch in the 2024 Tory leadership race, served as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary under Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. He was also Education Secretary in Boris Johnson’s zombie government in 2022 after fed up Conservative MPs forced the-then PM to announce his resignation.
But the gaffe-prone Tory has also made a string of unfortunate headlines. In 2023, he was forced to apologise after The Mirror revealed he’d joked about spiking his wife’s drink at a Downing Street reception. He told female guests that “a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night” was “not really illegal if it’s only a little bit”.
It came only hours after he announced a Home Office crackdown on drink spiking. A spokesman later said: “In what was always understood as a private conversation, James, the home secretary tackling spiking, made what was clearly meant to be an ironic joke – for which he apologises.”
Weeks earlier, the-then Stockton North MP Alex Cunningham accused Mr Cleverly of calling his constituency a s******* in PMQs. His team denied it, but later said: “He called Alex Cunningham a s*** MP. He apologises for unparliamentary language.”
Mr Cleverly was also forced to deny he called his own Government’s Rwanda deportation scheme “bats***” after Yvette Cooper told Parliament he had used the phrase.
His departure as Shadow Housing Secretary comes ahead of an expected reshuffle as Ms Badenoch battles to overhaul her party’s toxic reputation. The Tory leader’s personal popularity outstrips her party, which is dogged by ongoing anger at its failures in Government.
