Robert Jenrick’s latest immature stunt shows there’s nothing he won’t do to get attention

As the shadow justice secretary and rumoured Tory leadership hopeful turned the airwaves blue on ITV’s ‘Good Morning Britain’, his potty-mouthed outburst looked like another wheeze with which to yank the spotlight in his direction, says Sean O’Grady

It’s at times like this that a nation can really pull together. Times like Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, swearing in front of Kate Garraway on Good Morning Britain, as happened today. Quite the shocker, that.

True, as “TV moments” go, it is not up there with outspoken theatre critic Kenneth Tynan dropping the first “F-bomb” back in 1965, when he asked aloud “what, exactly, is wrong with the word ‘f***’?”; or Beth and Margaret’s first pre-watershed lesbian kiss on Brookside in 1994.

They were watershed events in our island story. So too was when Jenrick, banging on about David Lammy, said at 6.49am: “Well, Kate, it’s very early in the morning and your viewers are still having their breakfast, but that, I’m afraid, if you’ll excuse my language, is total bulls***”.

As one X user pointed out: ‘Resorting to swearing is a sign of desperation, embarrassing’ (ITV)

Kate promptly issued a sincere expression of apology to her viewers, “on your behalf to children watching because we know they watch this programme”, and scolded Jenrick: “Please don’t swear again because you’ll get us all into trouble.”

Context is all, and this sort of effing and jeffing at this hour of the day is simply not on. It is not the same as, say, a late-night showing of A Clockwork Orange – which Jenrick, true to form, would likely claim is now more like a documentary about the hellscape that is Starmer’s Britain.

The shape-shifting Jenrick has worn many increasingly garish and attention-grabbing hats of late – including that preposterous judge’s wig he pulled out at the Conservative Party conference. Indeed, the former Cameroon centrist turned Johnsonian loyalist turned anti-immigration hardliner is seemingly never short of a new trick with which to pique the nation’s curiosity, from brazenly chasing fare-dodgers on the London Underground to admitting to taking Ozempic for six weeks to slim down. But this latest took the biscuit.

Good Morning Britain is a wholesome, warm-hearted, anodyne, mumsy sort of show, a place where difficult subjects are handled with the same care a nursery teacher might extend to her charges, and where the cuddly plush toy-like figure of Ed Balls is more of a reassurance that all is well with the world than the walking Labour tax bombshell he once was. It’s not the place for anyone, least of all a supposed mature parliamentarian, to go all potty-mouthed.

During the subsequent BS-powered tumult on social media, I feel that X (Twitter) user Jess CB spoke for England when she declared that Jenrick’s bad language put her “right off my toast and jam”. Fellow poster deanbegley also got it right when he pointed out that: “Resorting to swearing is a sign of desperation, embarrassing.”

Indeed so. It’s obvious what Jenrick was up to, as it always is. Interviewed a whole hour earlier by the noticably world-weary Justin Webb on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Jenrick managed to get through some insistent questioning without ever losing his rag. Jenrick knew full well that the urbane listeners of the BBC Radio flagship wouldn’t be much bothered by performative bad language; the ITV lot would be much easier to wind up.

That Garraway’s more gentle, ingenuous style should provoke such an outburst? Pull the other one, it’s got Ed Balls on. Indeed, the pre-apology, “if you’ll excuse my language…”, clearly shows premeditation rather than some Tourette’s style outburst.

A man who seems to self-consciously ape the US vice-president, JD Vance, Jenrick might well be taking his cue from Vance and Donald Trump’s increasing tendency to publicly use earthy language in a manner far worse than any previous president (Richard Nixon and Harry Truman mostly kept their extravagant profanity confined to their colleagues). The world might actually have some sympathy for Trump when he offered reporters his succinct analysis of the Middle East: “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.” Correct, but not presidential.

I’m all for creative swearing, and am a great fan of The Thick of It. Anyone who’s spent much time in a newsroom – including in some of the more sanctimonious sections of the British press – soon gets inured to even the most gynaecological expressions of frustration. However, when it is used so cynically and self-servingly by – and if you’ll excuse my language – a berk like Jenrick, it is just too much to bear. In fact, every time I’ve ever seen Jenrick pop up, I smell exactly what he’s accused David Lammy of spreading. He knows where he can go. Maybe you can complete the sentence: he can…