Tories dodged a bullet with Jenrick defection

Every crisis is also an opportunity. On the face of it Robert Jenrick’s defection to Reform UK is a disaster for Kemi Badenoch.

The decision of a man who only last year was a candidate for Tory leader to jump ship signals that ambitious right-wingers now see Nigel Farage’s party as a better route to power than the Conservatives.

It also reinforces the split on the right of politics and demonstrates that the momentum is with Reform. The former shadow justice secretary is the biggest beast to stalk out of the Tory jungle. He has more credibility than Nadhim Zahawi, a former party chairman, who was fired in 2023 after failing to disclose that his tax affairs were being investigated by HMRC, and more gravitas than Nadine Dorries, who lost the Conservative whip in 2012 after taking part in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.

Yet Badenoch should, in fact, be celebrating the departure of a man who was neither loyal nor patient enough for opposition. She should be pleased that she no longer has to put up with his shameless plotting and ruthless ambition. She should be delighted that she no longer has to deal with Jenrick’s constant agitating for a deal with Reform or compromise on her principles to keep him in the Tory tent.

She should be thrilled that she can now plant the Conservative flag firmly on the centre-right of politics, anchored in the solid ground of economic prosperity and business credibility rather than the quick sand of culture wars.

This is a clarifying moment for Badenoch even if it does not feel like it. Jenrick was trying to drag the Tories into an ugly form of ethno-nationalism, complaining last year that he had visited an area of Birmingham where he “didn’t see another white face”. It was not, he told a Conservative association dinner, “the kind of country I want to live in.” He compared Handsworth to a “slum”.

He was the immigration minister who ordered that murals of Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters designed to welcome child asylum seekers to a reception centre in Dover be painted over. When he took aim at so-called “activist judges” and held up a wig during his party conference speech, as if it were a decapitated head, his attempt to turn the Conservatives back into the “nasty party” was complete.

This is not Badenoch’s politics. She does not define people by the colour of their skin or seek to apply some kind of white-faced “purity test” to patriotism. She has consistently argued that “identity politics is a trap”, declaring last year: “I am more than black, female and even Conservative. I am British.”

Her conference speech cut through because of its eye-catching promise to abolish stamp duty rather than any rabble-rousing rhetoric or gimmicky puppetry. The Tories will never succeed if they try to ape the populists, they need to show they are sensible and moderate to be trusted by the electorate again. Jenrick’s decision to walk out makes it easier to pursue this strategy with single-minded purpose.

There is also a danger for Reform. Farage’s success is based on the perception that he is a Westminster outsider, who will shake up politics and deliver change. He will blow up this image if he allows himself to be over-run by Tory retreads, and the more high profile the defectors are, the more Reform will start to look like any other party.

Jenrick was never happy to play second fiddle to Badenoch. He has grabbed the attention by switching to Reform, but one Tory MP says “he now has no leverage with Farage, either which puts him at maximum vulnerability”.

He was Badenoch’s problem, now he is Farage’s. And one thing is certain – the Reform leader does not like to share the limelight with anyone.

Photograph by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images