Stephen Pollard on the sacking of Robert Jenrick
Kemi Badenoch, presented with evidence that Robert Jenrick was planning to defect, has sacked him from the Shadow Cabinet, removed the whip, and suspended his Conservative party membership.
Here is what Stephen Pollard wrote about it today in the Spectator and on X.
"The most important thing about Robert Jenrick’s sacking isn’t Robert Jenrick. It’s that it is yet another demonstration of Kemi Badenoch’s increasing stature as Tory leader.
For most of her first year – Badenoch Mark I, as it were – the mood music was all about when she would be deposed. The assumption was that her replacement would be Jenrick. That changed pretty much overnight at last year’s Tory conference, when Badenoch Mark II emerged. She made a stomper of a speech that was clear and convincing and told a story about her party, while Jenrick’s speech was a damp squib. That coincided with Badenoch’s PMQs performances moving from halting to dominant. They are now a weekly opportunity for her to display her strength.
Under Badenoch Mark I, the last thing Jenrick would have been thinking about was defecting to Reform. His eyes were clearly on replacing her as leader.
Badenoch Mark II meant that wasn’t going to happen. Jenrick has a knack for polished social media videos but that’s about it. And his transformation from Tory centrist to supposed champion of the right in the run-up to the last election and the subsequent leadership contest was a bit too obviously careerist. That was one of the reasons Badenoch beat him when they stood against each other. She was clearly more authentic.
With his Tory ambitions so diminished, it seems he has seen more chance of advancement in Reform. Presented with what Badenoch calls ‘clear, irrefutable evidence’ that Jenrick was plotting to defect, the Tory leader was presented with a gift – a sacking that was both necessary, obvious and politically useful to her, further cementing her standing as leader.
As it happens, a few minutes after Nadhim Zahawi defected earlier this week I received a text from a very senior Reform member who predicted that, rather than defect, Jenrick would simply walk away from politics. ‘There is no appetite for him in Reform beyond a potential junior cabinet level position, which will not attract him.’ Let’s see…
The golfer Gary Player used to say that it was a strange coincidence that the more he practised, the luckier he got. There’s a parallel there with Kemi Badenoch. It might sound ridiculous, given that she is leading a diminished party that is struggling to regain support. But Kemi Badenoch is turning out to be a lucky leader of the Conservative party. Lucky, in the sense that the longer she is in the job, the better she gets at it – and the luckier she is with her enemies."
As John Harington wrote many yeas ago,
Sometimes of course, it does't prosper because the people plotted against are more competent than the plotters and eat them to the draw.
Comments
"Jenrick was runner up in the Tory Party’s 2024 leadership election. He is arguably their most effective digital age campaigner. And yet the Conservative Party and its leader Kemi Badenoch are almost certainly stronger following his expulsion for allegedly plotting to defect to Reform.
Don’t take my word for it. I have spoken to Tory MPs today from all wings and factions in the party. And there was no hint of sadness or regret at his brutal removal.
While none of them have explicitly said “good riddance,” they believe that his presence as a constant rival to Badenoch was too painful a reminder of the party’s modern history of civil war.
And they are also convinced that Badenoch’s decisiveness in expelling him reinforces her growing reputation for decisiveness and shows a defter political touch than she manifested during her first months as leader.
Her party is still somewhere between six and 10 percentage points behind Reform in the polls. And Reform is continuing to successfully woo councillors from the Tories. But its lead over the Conservatives has been on a narrowing trend in recent weeks.
Badenoch’s confidence and new ruthless streak has been visible for a while: she showed it when authorising her officials to character assassinate the former Conservative chancellor Nadhim Zahawi a few days ago, after he defected to Nigel Farage’s team.
By the way, no MP believes the reports that Badenoch found out by pure chance about his alleged treachery when one of her colleagues happened upon his draft resignation speech. “We assume one of his team ratted him out but wants protecting” said a senior Tory.
This is a return to politics as high grade soap opera.
As for Reform, it is moot whether its leadership in the polls would be reinforced or weakened by the potential high-profile recruitment.
As Michael Gove said on my show last night, with every Tory defection Reform looks less like a breath of new political air and more like an agglomeration of retreads from the last discredited government.
Farage and Reform were benefiting, in this analysis, from being the devils we didn’t know.
There is a risk that with every Tory recruit they become tainted not only by the last government’s conspicuous flaws but also its perceived addiction to skullduggery and backstabbing."