Lincoln Jopp – MP for Spelthorne

Photo credit- Laurie Noble

Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of the opposition and she will be spending her weekend working out her cabinet,

She has 121 MPs to choose from, though many have ruled themselves out of being anything more than backbenchers. The full list can easily be scrolled in a couple of minutes. It omits many names we would have expected to be there. It includes many who are not expected to play a part going forward.

Badenoch will struggle to populate all the junior positions and sadly the pension ministry is now a junior post.

If we find ourselves without a shadow pension minister it will probably be an issue of supply rather than demand. Alex Burghart, who had a flirtation with the brief for Liz Truss is still in post but whether he has appetite to return , I don’t know.

Not since Gregg McClymont have we had a shadow pensions minister that anyone can remember. Emma Reynolds has a background in financial services but she is having to learn pensions on the job. She has Andy Tarrant, Gregg’s #2 as her adviser, she has strong support. She needs a strong counterpart on the opposition benches.

I have a suggestion.

A former denizen of the Pension Superfund is now the Conservative MP for Spelthorne.  My train crosses his constituency every morning and evening. He went to the same school as George Osborne (and my son) , his name is Lincoln Jopp.

Lincoln isn’t on the Work and Pensions Committee and is presumably in parliament for a reason. As a military man, he might want to be in Defence, but Tom Tugendhat has no shortage of colleagues with army experience.

I hope that Lincoln will be approached and that he will accept the job of Shadow Pensions Minister because we need someone who knows pensions as he does, and because he is a decent bloke. You can read about him here – he knows a bit about service.

Jopp was one of the few new faces in Tory ranks in 2024