Why James ‘normal’ Cleverly is the Tory leader Labour fears the most

If James Cleverly is ever elected prime minister, it may be one phrase wot won it for him.

When he stood before the Conservative conference in Birmingham a week ago and said “Let’s be more normal”, he changed the terms of the leadership contest. In yesterday’s third round of voting, he jumped from third place to first.

Not only did the Tory party suddenly realise that what it wanted above all was to put the freak show of five prime ministers in eight years behind it, but Cleverly offered himself as the most “normal” of the candidates.

“Let’s be enthusiastic, relatable, positive, optimistic. Let’s be more normal!” he said in a speech that went down well in the hall, with MPs and with party activists. As battle cries go, it will also have sent shivers down Labour spines.

According to ministers, 55-year-old Cleverly is the candidate they would least like to have as the next Tory leader – “the one we wouldn’t want”. With Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch having tacked to the right, “he’s the most likely to appeal to moderate voters”.

Part of that appeal lies in his ordinariness, and in being someone who does not come across as a politician. At a conference fringe event last week, he even admitted he had a “slightly blokey Neanderthal past”, which has hardly counted against his chances.

“I could not understand why he wanted to be a politician,” said Jenny Jones, a Green fellow member of the London Assembly, who recalled the arrival of “a soldier” – he was an army reservist – in 2008.

Politics was an unexpected turn for Cleverly, who, by the end of his thirties, had tried the army (until a leg injury stopped him), banking (which he didn’t like) and digital publishing.

He was born and brought up in south London by his father, a surveyor, and his mother, from Sierra Leone, who was a midwife. They weren’t rich but they sent him to Colfe’s, a private school in Greenwich. “They were paying for my education while living in a one-bedroom flat,” he told one interviewer.

He took a degree in hospitality management at Ealing College, where he met Susie Sparks, whom he married nine years later.

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Cleverly became a member of the London Assembly when Boris Johnson won the mayoralty. Johnson put him in charge of closing London fire stations – a difficult political job that Cleverly carried out with enthusiasm and good humour. He stayed close to the fireball of blond ambition right until it burned out in 2022. Before it did, though, Cleverly’s association with Johnson helped his rapid rise through the Tory hierarchy.

He was selected for the safe Tory seat of Braintree in Essex, becoming an MP in 2015. He supported the campaign to leave the EU, led by Johnson, in 2016, and was made a deputy chair of the Tory party by Theresa May in 2018.

His ambition shone through even at this early stage, only slightly muffled by his cheerful affability. He told Nick Robinson of the BBC that year: “I would like to see the boss in place for a nice long time but, do you know what – why wouldn’t you love that job? It’s an amazing job.”

He was made a junior Brexit minister the following year, and when Johnson became prime minister joined his cabinet as party chair. He was “relentlessly enthusiastic”, Jessica Prestidge, his special adviser, told the BBC. He gained a reputation as the “minister for the 8.10am slot” on the Today programme, for which he had the knack shared by surprisingly few politicians of appearing to answer the questions.

He served most of his time in Johnson’s government as a minister in the Foreign Office, before a brief spell as education secretary in the chaos of Johnson’s departure and then took over as foreign secretary when Liz Truss became prime minister.

It was a job he loved, saying he would have to be dragged out of it “with nail marks down the parquet flooring” when there was speculation that he might replace Ben Wallace at defence. Guto Harri, Johnson’s former spokesperson and a friend of Cleverly’s, described him as “sure-footed in a world literally full of minefields”.

Cleverly did not have any great achievements to his name before he was shifted to the Home Office, to make way for the return of David Cameron late last year, but he was good at the gladhanding, the photo ops and the bonhomie with foreign ministers.

He was also responsible for beginning the final phase of negotiations for handing over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a task completed by the Labour government, and one that may yet count against him with the patriotic ultras of the Tory grassroots. They are unlikely to be swayed by the pragmatic argument that it was better to reach a deal than to be forced to hand over the territory by the international court.

More normal members of the wider electorate are likely to be less impressed by his support for Liz Truss, and by his loyalty to Johnson. He stuck with Johnson to the end, urging the former prime minister to try to return to office after Truss’s fall.

That was not normal – but he still manages to come across as “relatable”, as he obliquely boasted in his conference speech. His wife Susie – interviewed in today’s Times to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month, having been diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago – says: “He can do everything. He can sew, he can cook, he irons.”

She adds: “I know James, and finally the rest of the country is catching up to where I’ve been for the last 31 years. He will be fantastic at the job.”

If he is selected to lead the Conservative Party next month, it may be because of that clever phrase in his conference pitch, which his speechwriters Joe Tetlow and Callum Price insist he wrote himself. And you wouldn’t expect anything less from a successful self-made man.