The right can’t unite. It’s now a fight to the death between the Tories and Reform

The right will continue to fight. There is now no chance of the Tories and Reform UK kissing, making  up and striking an electoral deal for the foreseeable. It is going to be a merciless grapple for supremacy on the right. That is the conclusion I draw from the outpourings of bitterness and bile triggered by the rattery of Robert Jenrick.

The official explanation for his lateness in turning up at his own defection announcement is that he got lost in a stairwell trying to find his way around an unfamiliar building. That wouldn’t be the first time the MP for Newark has been on a convoluted journey. He was a so-called “Tory moderniser” when that was the Conservative fashion, and such a slavish follower of David Cameron that it earned him the nickname “Robert Generic”. He then became a devotee of Boris Johnson before morphing into a nasty culture warrior and anti-immigration zealot who, as a Home Office minister, ordered the removal of Disney murals at a child-refugee centre because they were “too welcoming”.

After failing in his bid to become Tory leader, and then seen the dimming of his prospects of making a second attempt, he opened clandestine negotiations with Reform. “He’s the ultimate careerist and saw his chances of succeeding Badenoch slipping away,” remarks one senior Tory, offering the most widely accepted explanation for his defection. It is a big deal deserting one party for another, so it would be understandable if he agonised before taking the plunge. Nigel Farage claims it was a “60/40” decision before Kemi Badenoch intervened, mock-thanking her for handing him the recruit “on a plate”. Well, maybe. To anyone familiar with Mr Jenrick’s biography, it had begun to look inevitable that the odyssey of this shape-shifting opportunist would carry him into the arms of Reform. “I’ve put aside my personal ambition,” is the most risibly untrue thing he said last Thursday.

His switcheroo has been accompanied by extreme levels of vitriol between his old party and his new one. There was an appetiser earlier in the week, when Tory spinners responded to Nadhim Zahawi’s defection by scorning him as a disgraced “has-been” who had “begged” for a Conservative peerage. The dial of invective has now been turned up to maximum for the Jenrick defection. His “betrayed” local constituency association demand that he subject himself to the verdict of the voters by calling a byelection. Surprise, surprise, he will do no such thing. His previous, repeated and vehement disavowals that he would ever do the rat are paraded as evidence of serial mendacity by a treacherous chancer.

He’s answered their insults with some of his own. His defection speech did not confine itself to rehearsing the familiar Faragiste tropes that the Tory governments, in which he held positions, left Britain “broken”. He betrayed confidences shared in shadow cabinet meetings and lacerated former colleagues by name, concentrating his venom on Sir Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, for presiding over a rising welfare budget when he was work and pensions secretary, and Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, for letting migration run out of control when she was home secretary. This is not business; this is viciously personal.

Both his old party and his new one believe they have gained from these events. Most Tories are applauding their leader for dumping him before he jumped, with the pre-emptive strike that sacked him from the shadow cabinet and stripped him of the Tory whip hours before he unveiled his new colours. “Kemi did very well,” says one former Conservative cabinet minister. “The smack of firm government and all that.” Her more fervent cheerleaders are being a bit silly when they suggest that makes Mrs B the reincarnation of Mrs T. It is fair to say that it was shrewd to act swiftly and decisively rather than dither around helplessly waiting for him to act. By junking him before he jilted her, she drained the defection of some of its shock value.

Not all of it, though. Mr Farage claims to be delighted to have bagged a member of the shadow cabinet who very nearly became Tory leader a little over a year ago and has regularly topped the ConservativeHome league table of the senior Tories most admired by the party’s activists. It adds to Reform’s swelling but motley collection of former Conservative ministers and MPs. You have to wonder how this is a fit with Reform’s claim to be the unforgiving scourge of a failed status quo. How can you present yourself as a clean break when your outfit is filling up with shop-soiled Tories? Some of Mr Farage’s colleagues fret that their party is becoming a refugee camp for a ragbag of rejected Conservatives. Taking in Boris Johnson and Liz Truss would make it the full set. Reform’s leader does not seem to regard this as a problem. Says a friend: “One of the reasons Nigel can shrug this off is because the typical Reform voter thinks all politicians are crooks anyway.”

Mr Farage is calculating that accepting Tories who served in the last government is a price worth paying to compensate for Reform’s glaring lack of ministerial experience, even if their track record is one which he routinely lambasts as a litany of lies and incompetence. He also enjoys the ego-gratifying experience of seeing Tory defectors abase themselves. “He comes here in sackcloth and ashes,” Reform’s leader cackled about Mr Jenrick who grovelled to “Nigel” by calling him the only man who can “save our country”.

Both Reform and the Tories come out of this feeling that it has given them momentum. Mrs Badenoch’s generally admired handling of the episode has added a dab of lustre to her leadership. She’s gained more space, if she’s got the wit to exploit it, to rebuild the Conservatives as a centre-right party playing to its traditional strengths on tax, spending, “sound money” and growth – the issues on which they’ve often won elections and still, according to the pollsters, have an advantage.

Reform, 10 points ahead of the Tories in the poll of polls, reckons it is still in the box seat and expects its claim to be the principal party of opposition to be vindicated with handsome gains in the May elections. Neither the blue corner nor the turquoise one think they have any incentive to parley. “Never!” spits one senior Tory MP. “They’re out to destroy us.” There’s no deal to be done when the fear and loathing is so pronounced. Forget any notions of “uniting the right”. It is going to be mortal combat.

Photograph by Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire