Tory reshuffle: Badenoch replaces Mel Stride and Priti Patel

Two senior Conservatives have been dropped from the front bench

Kemi Badenoch has carried out a major reshuffle of the Conservative shadow cabinet, with Sir Mel Stride and Dame Priti Patel leaving the front bench as the party prepares for its conference in October. Stride has been replaced as shadow chancellor by Andrew Griffith, while Tom Tugendhat takes over from Patel as shadow foreign secretary. Griffith, who previously worked as a Sky executive and chaired Just Eat, will lead a new economic team focused on growth, living standards and fiscal credibility. Claire Coutinho will move from the energy brief to become shadow business secretary and Griffith’s deputy, although she is currently on maternity leave and will be covered by Julia Lopez until the new year. The changes come as Badenoch attempts to give her party a fresh start after the 2024 election defeat. With the Conservatives currently trailing Labour and Reform UK in most polls, the new line-up is intended to strengthen the party’s challenge and prepare it for the next election.

What the Tory reshuffle means for economic policy

A senior Tory source said Badenoch was "changing the way the Conservative Party approaches economic policy and creating a new economic leadership team for the next phase, focused on growth, higher living standards and fiscal credibility". Griffith said the Tories would deliver "an economic revolution" built on lower taxes, domestic drilling and less red tape. "The Conservatives will always back the risk-takers and wealth creators who deliver growth, investment and jobs," he said. Stride called his time in post a "great honour". Before entering Parliament as the MP for Arundel and South Downs in 2019, Andrew Griffith held senior positions in the business world, including a top role at Sky and the chairmanship of Just Eat. His record in government is already being used by Labour to attack the Conservatives' new front bench. Griffith was a Treasury minister who defended Liz Truss's 2022 mini-Budget, which caused significant economic turmoil. Labour chair Bridget Phillipson seized on that history, branding Griffith “a key architect of Liz Truss's disastrous mini-Budget” and arguing that Badenoch's new shadow cabinet includes politicians who “hammered family finances” and left public services struggling. Labour, meanwhile, sets the agenda, from the cost of the asylum system has fallen by nearly £1bn to everything Andy Burnham has done in his first month as PM.