Chancellor Rishi Sunak has appointed new MPs from among the vastly reduced Conservative membership in Westminster, meaning four in 10 Conservative MPs now sit on the party’s frontbench.
Newcomers include Danny Kruger, co-chair of the right-wing Neo-Conservative group and now shadow defence secretary, and Alicia Kearns, a former chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee and now shadow foreign secretary.
About a dozen of Friday’s appointees hold multiple jobs, including former assistant chief whip Paul Holmes, who has been given a triple job, acting as chief whip for the Foreign Office and Northern Ireland department while also acting as chief whip for the Conservative party.
Former junior minister Andrew Bowie will become shadow veterans secretary as well as shadow energy security and net zero secretary, Saqib Bhati will take up the junior roles of shadow science and technology and shadow health and social care, and Gareth Bacon will take up the junior roles of shadow justice and shadow business and trade.
The former prime minister made these additions on Friday after announcing his interim shadow cabinet last week. The new appointments mean the Conservative front bench now has 51 MPs, 42% of the parliamentary party’s total.
The number of Conservative MPs has been reduced to 121 after 175 of the previous parliament’s members lost their seats in the general election earlier this month.
Just how squeezed the Conservative Party is has been made clear in the past 48 hours, with former cabinet minister Edward Algar, acting as shadow figure for Minister for Justice Shabana Mahmood to respond on behalf of the party to the government statement on prisoner releases, and then rising again on Friday morning to respond to the government statement on the Covid-19 inquiry’s interim module report.
In the House of Lords, Earl Howe was appointed shadow deputy leader of the House of Commons, meaning the former minister will be on the Conservative frontbench for 33 uninterrupted years.
The party said on Friday that last week’s appointments, including the shadow caretaker cabinet, “mean that the Conservative Party is now fully prepared to provide the opposition people want to a new Labour government”.
“This interim front bench recognises the talent within our parliamentary party and will continue to draw on the wealth of existing Conservative expertise drawn from members’ personal and professional backgrounds,” he added.
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A leadership change is likely if a new leader succeeds Sunak, but it is unclear when that will happen because there are deep divisions among key figures within the party and senior Conservative leaders have been unable to agree on a timetable for a leadership election.
This means that no decision will be made on selecting a new leader until at least next week, when 1922 Committee officials meet again.
