Star Wars Lover James Cleverly Tries To Defy The Odds
10 min read
Having served in two of the great offices of state, James Cleverly has the most cabinet experience of any of the candidates.
But it is unclear whether his colleagues feel this translates to strong leadership prospects.
The biography
James Cleverly, 55, was born in Lewisham to Evelyn, a midwife from Sierra Leone, and Wiltshire-born Philip, a surveyor who ran his own business. The midwife who attended the deliveries of both of Cleverly’s own sons, Freddy, 22, and Rupert, 20, trained under his mother. Cleverly grew up in south London in the 1970s and has recalled times when the National Front marched through streets near his home, experiencing teasing from kids for being mixed-race.
He was an only child after his parents realised they couldn’t afford two sets of private education, with the family sharing a one-bed flat – his parents sleeping on a fold-out bed in the living room – to afford school fees. After attending Colfe’s School, a private school in south-east London (where he later sent his sons), Cleverly hoped to follow family tradition in joining the army, but a leg injury during his second year of training at Sandhurst forced a rethink. He did a degree in hospitality management studies and started working in magazine and digital publishing while also joining the Territorial Army (TA).
Cleverly has always voted Conservative, first standing for local government in 2002 after knocking on doors the year before left him stunned by the hostility he received from Black voters at voting Conservative. A memo he wrote on how to overcome that was shared through friends of friends and eventually made its way to then-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith. The pair met to discuss detoxifying the Tory brand and Cleverly still cites Duncan Smith’s work to diversify the party as the reason he became an MP.
In 2004, he was called up by the TA (then a volunteer commanding officer – later rising to lieutenant colonel – in the Royal Artillery) to offer support during the Iraq war, working from the UK to mobilise reservists. It was only afterwards that Cleverly first stood, unsuccessfully, for Parliament in Lewisham East, then getting elected onto the London Assembly in 2008.
It is there that he befriended Boris Johnson (Cleverly later being one of just 30 guests at Johnson’s wedding to Carrie Symonds), having been asked to become the then-London mayor’s youth ambassador. When Johnson left for Westminster in 2015, Cleverly followed, becoming the MP for Braintree.
He has served in two of the four great offices of state as home secretary and foreign secretary. A party loyalist, he stayed continuously in government from 2018 while the Tories cycled through leaders. He won the admiration of Rishi Sunak’s campaign team for remaining with the ship as other senior figures made themselves scarce when asked to help out in the election.
The pitch
A Brexit-supporting rugby fan (he used to play number 8 at Blackheath Rugby Club), Cleverly once claimed the referendum would be like a rugby match, with two sides throwing themselves at each other before going for a pint together afterwards. That might not have come to pass but he insists it remains his approach to politics today.
He says he is the candidate best able to bring the party together and speaks of his desire for the party to “unite… think and act like Conservatives again”. Also prominent in his pitch is a commitment to increase defence spending to three per cent of GDP as soon as possible.
He is a robust defender of the previous government’s Rwanda policy and has committed to bring it back if he becomes prime minister. Labour’s decision to scrap it, Cleverly argues, shows a “disdainful attitude” to Rwanda and said the handling would not have been the same if it were a European country.
He loves a gag but he can’t control and gag himself
It was a visit to his aunt, a major general in the Sierra Leonean army, at her home in the Wilberforce barracks — named after the British abolitionist — that shaped Cleverly’s view on race, aged only eight or nine. Sierra Leone had been a west African home for emancipated slaves after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. “You had this slightly British veneer on this very African country,” he later said. “I don’t see that as a contradiction. Some people might say, ‘Hang on a second, those soldiers wearing those uniforms, these are all British things imposed upon this African country and they are artificial. . . I don’t buy that.” He has privately remarked to friends of the odd experience he had as the first Black foreign secretary walking through the corridors of the Foreign Office past colonial murals.
Cleverly has urged the party not to lurch right by attempting a “passable impression” of Nigel Farage, emphasising that Liberal Democrat and Labour voters must also be wooed over to the Tories, not just Reform.
The hinterland
The sci-fi-loving Cleverly was delighted when his leadership merch arrived brandishing his name in what looked like the Star Wars font. (He was less pleased when caps meant to be a perfectly Tory blue turned up in black.) Heavily into painting his miniature Warhammer figures, Cleverly once considered a career in the arts – his grandfather having been an art and maths teacher – but decided against it after his father told him it would never lead to any money. Still-life paintings from his grandfather hang on the walls of the family home, while his mini figures are also usually on display.
He met his wife Susie when he was serving behind Ealing College’s student bar on her first day at the college. “James appeared in the middle of the crowd and said something like, ‘You’ve got the most beautiful eyes’. I went bright red, then he disappeared. Ten minutes later he came back and said, ‘I should probably introduce myself’, we got chatting, started going out pretty much straight away, and that was 31 years ago,” Susie says.
James Cleverly with his wife Susie arriving at Tory conference in Birmingham (Alamy)
They got engaged at the old Hungarian restaurant and political hotspot the Gay Hussar, in Soho, more famous as a hotbed of political plotting for those on the left than the start of a happy Tory marriage. After proposing at the restaurant, they went to celebrate with family on the impressive Silver Sturgeon yacht, owned by Cleverly’s family as part of Woods’ Silver Fleet of Thames cruisers.
The whole family attended his leadership launch. Living in Blackheath during their time in London, some of Cleverly’s cousins are half a mile away, and friends from NCT (National Childbirth Trust) classes are just next door. It was during his time as a minister in the Foreign Office that Susie was diagnosed with breast cancer. He received a call from her breaking the news, upon which he cancelled his busy schedule and suddenly broke down. “Liz Truss was foreign secretary at the time, and she was great, because she said to James: ‘Take any time you need’,” Susie says. “I think there was one time where he needed to go in, which I said was absolutely fine, but I think it was harder for him to leave me at home when he knows what I’m going through.”
His mother had survived the same cancer and, when both of his parents had health difficulties in old age, Cleverly moved them in as a family so that he and Susie could help if needed. It meant that his mother had two years constantly spending time with her grandchildren. Cleverly’s father, after a spell in Barbados, has now moved back in with the family.
He is a leader people would feel comfortable with, you could chat to in the corridor
He and his wife have recently downsized, moving house alongside a general election and entering a leadership race. “We were going to take it nice and easy over the summer,” Susie says. “It was only when the election was underway, the polls weren’t looking great, and we got to the last week or two and looked at each other and thought the way the polls were going – all these people were going to be losing their seats, all the people that we thought would be next in line were likely to go – and I said, ‘I think you might be one of the only people left. I think you should go for it. The country needs you!’”
One moment from early in his parliamentary career stands out in colleagues’ memories. Wearing his regimental Gunners tie, voice breaking, he paid tribute in the Commons chamber to Keith Palmer, following the police officer’s brutal murder at Westminster’s New Palace Yard in March 2017. Cleverly had served alongside Palmer in the Royal Artillery 25 years earlier.
What others say
One fellow MP neatly expresses a concern at his capacity for gaffes: “He loves a gag but he can’t control and gag himself.” Early in his political career he unwisely agreed to play ‘snog, marry, avoid’. He chose to snog Theresa May, marry Yvette Cooper and avoid Isabel Oakeshott. He reportedly described then-prime minister Rishi Sunak’s flagship Rwanda scheme as “batshit” and had a row over whether or not he called Stockton-on-Tees a “shithole”. He made an off-colour joke to journalists about spiking his wife’s drinks just after announcing a law to clamp down on the crime, leading to what friends of the Cleverlys have described as “one of their worst Christmases”. “Too often thinking in that army mindset of the next gag to push it further,” one of his colleagues sniffs.
His surname is a gift to detractors but even supporters of other camps think the ‘Not-so Cleverly’ moniker undeserved. One says: “It is unfair that the nickname has gained any traction. It is quite clear that James is a bright man.”
Cleverly pays tribute to his friend PC Keith Palmer who was murdered in 2017 (Alamy)
Some thought he would be exposed as home secretary, with even a close friend fearing for him, but the concerns were unfounded. One senior Tory figure says “with the right ballasts around him” Cleverly has the temperament of being a successful opposition leader, but urges him to “control his personality; have an on and off switch”.
He is sociable, relaxed and not lacking in confidence – sometimes to a fault (he once said: “I talk too much and sometimes I speak a bit too frankly, which I think people like until they don’t like it”). Another senior Tory makes comparisons to Boris, but says: “Boris was better at using it as a character. It is something James need to learn.”
There is another appeal to Cleverly, according to members of his party. “He is a leader people would feel comfortable with, you could chat to in the corridor. After a stressful, hellish few years some colleagues see the benefits in that,” one Tory MP says.
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