Kemi Badenoch appoints Rebecca Harris as Conservative chief whip, says predecessor

Rebecca Harris has been appointed Conservative chief whip, according to her predecessor Stuart Andrew.

Dame Rebecca has been MP for Castle Point in Essex since 2010 and a Conservative whip since 2018.

In a post on X, former chief whip Mr Andrew said: “It has been an honour and a privilege to serve as the Conservative Party chief whip.

“Rebecca Harris is a great friend and a brilliant whip. I wish her all the best in the role.”

There has been no official announcement from the party's new leader Kemi Badenoch.

The new Tory leader is understood to want her top team in place by Tuesday, when the shadow cabinet is scheduled to meet for the first time since her election.

During the campaign, she suggested she would be open to offering roles to all five of her leadership rivals, although former home secretary James Cleverly has already announced his intention to return to the backbenches.

Other senior Tories to return to the backbenches include Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, and Ms Badenoch’s predecessor as leader, Rishi Sunak.

But Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, Mel Stride and Dame Priti Patel appear to still be open to offers of front-bench jobs.

Among Ms Badenoch’s public backers, former Treasury minister Andrew Griffith has been widely tipped as a possible shadow chancellor.

Ms Badenoch became the first black woman to lead a major European political party on Saturday, when she defeated Mr Jenrick by 53,806 votes to 41,388.

Her initial shadow cabinet selections may also give an indication of the direction in which she intends to take the party, with several commentators suggesting her election heralds a shift to the right as the Tories try to recover votes lost to Reform UK.

In her victory speech on Saturday, she acknowledged that her party had a “huge job” ahead of it, and needed to be “honest” about where it had “made mistakes”.

She said: “The time has come to tell the truth, to stand up for our principles, to plan for our future, to reset our politics and our thinking, and to give our party, and our country, the new start that they deserve.”

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