James Cleverly: How will the UK's new foreign secretary handle aid?

The United Kingdom’s government has a new foreign secretary, James Cleverly, appointed by Prime Minister Liz Truss. The fifth foreign secretary in less than five years, Cleverly will take over the position Truss is vacating as leader of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

While Cleverly has been a staunch Conservative Party and Truss loyalist, a very different picture of the two politicians emerges when talking to those who have worked for them — with Cleverly often seen as capable and personable while Truss has a reputation as simplistic and divisive.

An FCDO official described him to Devex as an “altogether smarter and more sophisticated operator” than Truss.

As foreign secretary, Cleverly will be in charge of international development policy and much of the aid budget, along with broader foreign policy. Neither are new areas for him — and alongside his diplomatic work, Cleverly was briefly responsible for the much-delayed international development strategy, and engaged with development organizations.

Cleverly’s mother immigrated to the U.K. from Sierra Leone, giving him a “stronger grounding and interest in poverty and development, but he’s also a loyal party man, you don't get to be where he is without doing that,” said the official. “He’s astute at positioning himself with shifting currents of power in Tory Party.”

Cleverly discussed his Sierra Leonean background in a BBC radio documentary, reminiscing about his experiences visiting the country as a child and seeing the “British veneer on the very African country.” He told the program he disagreed with the U.K. paying out reparations for slavery, saying he would “rather look forward in the future rather than having a really, really big row about these fiendishly complex and ambiguous challenges of the past.”

Cleverly became a member of Parliament for Braintree, Essex, in 2015, and was chairman of the Conservative Party before joining FCDO as a minister in February 2020. At the department, Cleverly cultivated a good reputation as an effective and proactive diplomat while in charge of the Middle East and North Africa brief.  

He was promoted to minister of state for Europe and North America in February 2022, effectively a deputy foreign secretary role while Truss was occupied with the war in Ukraine. “For both [former foreign secretary Dominic] Raab and for Truss, he was seen as a reliable and trusted pair of hands who could take on the problems that are tricky and handle and manage them effectively,” said the official.

“He did a decent job given the limited cards that we hold; whether [as foreign secretary] he has heft to shift the deck of cards in his hand is another question,” the official added. “To reposition ourselves we need to take brave calls about spending money.”

Like Truss, Cleverly did not join the slew of ministers resigning to trigger Boris Johnson’s resignation in July, and was named education secretary that month. Throughout his time as a minister, he often appeared in media for the government, taking on difficult subjects such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cleverly “came across as nice and very charismatic,” said an FCDO official who worked with him. A former official described him as “affable” and “certainly not the worst” minister to deal with officials. “Whether he’s any better than Truss, I don’t know,” the person added.  

“He’s actually not that bad,” said another official. “Does what is asked. Friendly. Competent. One of the best JMs [junior ministers]. Only [former FCDO minister Alistair] Burt [was] better.”

Another person said he “tends to mean well enough” and was “likable to work with” but was also “work shy.”

Among NGOs, there has been a similar response. One senior aid worker told Devex: “He seemed nice enough, across his brief and reasonably diplomatic (i.e. he seems to treat NGO people civilly and sympathetically even while disagreeing with us) but I've never seen him diverge from the party line.”

This view was echoed by Sarah Champion, Labour member of Parliament and chair of the international development committee, which scrutinizes FCDO’s work, including by questioning Cleverly. Champion said he was “fundamentally a very decent man, but he is also very much a Conservative [party] team player. He will, from what I’ve seen, always put the Conservative Party ahead of maybe some of the concerns he has around things. … Sometimes I think he’ll need to do what’s right rather than expected.”  

Cleverly consistently defended the government during the aid cuts, which caused severe depletion of the U.K.’s development program and harm to its broader international reputation. An exchange he had with Devex at a Women’s Institute meeting revealed the government had no plans to engage the development sector on how the harm from the aid cuts could be reduced or affect their work.

Cleverly is a lieutenant colonel in the army reserve and traits relating to his military experience, such as “discipline, team spirit, doing things for your side is very deeply ingrained in him,” said Champion.

But while Champion saw Cleverly as strong on diplomacy and national security matters, she thought he was not “as up to speed” on development.