Do we like them?Do we like James Cleverly?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A mostly decent record with a couple of real marks, and too little confirmed to go higher.
Cleverly grew up in Lewisham in south-east London, the son of a British surveyor father and a midwife mother from Sierra Leone, per profiles. He went into the Army Reserve, then business, then politics, and has been Braintree's MP since 2015. He is the kind of Tory who gets described as relaxed and likeable rather than fierce.
His biggest gaffe was a Downing Street reception in December 2023, where he reportedly joked about spiking his wife's drink, hours after announcing new anti-spiking measures. His spokesperson said it was an ironic private joke and he apologised, but Labour and the Fawcett Society were unimpressed. It's a bad look for a Home Secretary rather than a pattern, but it landed badly for women's safety campaigners.
On the harm check, nothing hateful in his own words turned up in what I could see. The sharp end is policy: as Home Secretary he flew to Kigali in December 2023 to sign a new asylum treaty with Rwanda, and in his 2024 leadership bid he vowed to bring the scheme back. PinkNews and others argued that was dangerous for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. Whether you read it as tough border policy or as harm depends on where you stand, but it's the main mark here.
On LGBTQ+ rights, PinkNews calls him generally an ally in his words, but reports that he has abstained on LGBTQ+ rights votes and generally voted against equality laws. It also noted he was criticised for telling fans to be respectful of Qatar's laws before the 2022 World Cup. That adds up to a so-so record rather than a bad one, and we found no campaigning against trans people from him.
Lately he has swapped Westminster for the mayoral chase, resigning from the shadow cabinet and pitching himself as a fighter for London against Burnham. It is early days, with the vote not until May 2028, so there is no record yet of what he would do with the job.
Honest gap: I couldn't open full articles this round, so this leans on search listings and headlines, and I found no confirmed charity work or court record to set against the marks. That makes him a hesitant yes: decent company, a few real stains, and a policy record worth watching.