Stride Sacked as Badenoch's Reshuffle Becomes a Full Sweep
Sir Mel Stride was sacked as shadow chancellor and replaced by Andrew Griffith, as Kemi Badenoch’s reshuffle widened well beyond the Patel-Tugendhat swap — Claire Coutinho becomes shadow business secretary, a new “Conservative Economic Unit” is created under Griffith, and Stuart Andrew and Helen Grant depart. Mr Griffith promised “an economic revolution” of lower taxes and “Britain drilling again”; Labour retorted that he “backed Truss” and the mini-budget “left families paying the price”.
Sacking a shadow chancellor eight weeks before a Budget is a statement that the economic argument, not the personnel, was failing — and Ms Badenoch has chosen to answer Reform’s insurgent economics with a former Sky executive promising revolution rather than stewardship. The Truss association is the gamble’s known cost: Labour’s attack wrote itself within the hour, and every Griffith pledge will be priced against the mini-budget he once defended. Yet the deeper logic is defensible — a party polling third cannot win a caution contest, and the Economic Unit structure suggests actual preparation rather than mere positioning. The reshuffle’s unfilled gaps — health, housing — show its improvised origins. Watch Mr Griffith’s Budget response on 28 October — his first real audition, against a chancellor holding all the bad numbers.