James Cleverly

Sir James Spencer Cleverly (born 4 September 1969) is a British politician and Army Reserve officer who has served as Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government since July 2025. He previously served as Home Secretary from November 2023 to July 2024 and as Foreign Secretary from 2022 to 2023. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Braintree since 2015. He previously served as Education Secretary from July to September 2022, Chairman of the Conservative Party alongside Ben Elliot from 2019 to 2020, and in other junior ministerial positions. Born in Lewisham, Cleverly attended Riverston School and Colfe's School. He went on to study hospitality management studies at the Ealing College of Higher Education, before he pursued a military career after he was commissioned into the Army Reserve in 1991. Cleverly was elected to the London Assembly for Bexley and Bromley in the 2008 election for the Conservative party, and served as the party's leader in the assembly from 2011 to 2012. He was elected to the House of Commons for Braintree in 2015 general election, and later stood down from the London Assembly in the 2016 election. He advocated a vote for Brexit in the 2016 EU membership referendum and was reelected to parliament in the 2017 general election. In the second May ministry, Cleverly served as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party from 2018 to 2019 and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union from April to July 2019. Cleverly was promoted to the Cabinet as minister without portfolio in the First Johnson ministry, serving as Chairman of the Conservative Party alongside Ben Elliot from 2019 to 2020. Cleverly was demoted from the Cabinet in the 2020 cabinet reshuffle; serving as Minister of State for Middle East, North Africa and North America from February 2020 to February 2022 and as Minister of State for Europe and North America from February to July 2022. During the July 2022 government crisis, Cleverly returned to Cabinet; succeeding Michelle Donelan as Secretary of State for Education. In September 2022, he was appointed foreign secretary by Prime Minister Liz Truss, whom he had directly served under while she was Foreign Secretary. Retained as foreign secretary when Rishi Sunak became prime minister in October 2022, Cleverly was then appointed home secretary in the November 2023 cabinet reshuffle, being succeeded as foreign secretary by former prime minister David Cameron. As Home Secretary, Cleverly committed to maintaining the Rwanda asylum plan and introduced a plan to substantially reduce legal migration to the UK by raising the threshold for family visas. After Labour's victory in the 2024 general election, Cleverly was appointed Shadow Home Secretary in Sunak's shadow cabinet, and later launched his bid to become Leader of the Conservative Party but was knocked out of the contest in the final round of MP voting. He spent 8 months on the backbenches after the election of Kemi Badenoch as leader, receiving a knighthood in April 2025 for political and public service, before returning to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Housing Secretary in a reshuffle in July 2025.