If Robert Jenrick applied to be my chancellor, I’d laugh his CV out of the door

Better known for owning so many houses that he couldn’t decide which one to lock down in under Covid regulations, the new shining star of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is even less qualified for the second-most-important job in the country than the incumbent, says John Rentoul

What on earth qualifies Robert Jenrick to be chancellor? The man who would be running the nation’s Treasury was supposedly awarded the title of “Reform’s shadow chancellor” by Nigel Farage because he was the “most anti-Truss” choice available. Unlike Farage himself, Jenrick did not praise Liz Truss’s mini-Budget as “the best Conservative Budget since 1986”. So that’s a plus.

Jenrick has no economic qualifications to speak of. He said in his speech in the City today that like Farage, who was once a commodities trader, “I had my first break in the City.” By which I think he means he was a lawyer for a US law firm that had an office in London.

He studied history at university (as did Gordon Brown and George Osborne), and what was striking about his speech today was that it was political rather than economic. It was full of lines that Rachel Reeves (who has a masters in economics) used to use in opposition. Reform is “the party of workers and not welfare”, Jenrick said, wearing a pair of serious-looking glasses. “We will not make promises we cannot keep.”

Jenrick was a health minister in Truss’s brief government, so he wasn’t called upon to defend Truss’s unfunded tax cuts and spending plans that caused market meltdown. Nor has he defended them since.

His aptitude for the position, therefore, is less to do with who he is than who he isn’t. Richard Tice, who was Jenrick’s main rival for the “shadow chancellor” role, was the main architect at the last election of Reform’s plan to introduce tax cuts that were twice as big as Truss’s, and not so much unfunded as fantasy-funded. Tice avoided praising Truss, but he shared her hostility towards the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), and he questioned the independence of the Bank of England.

Jenrick scuttled back to the safety of what Truss once derided as “Treasury orthodoxy”. He attacked Truss’s Budget, saying that “the result was chaos and working people suffered”. He said “a Reform government will never play fast and loose with your savings”, announcing that the party would instead keep the OBR but overhaul it, and preserve the Bank’s control of interest rates.

So far, so sensible. Farage has realised that with Reform entertaining the serious possibility that it might form a government after the next election, any whiff of Trussism could be disastrous. The big tax cuts have already been ditched; now Jenrick is trying to nail down anything else that might suggest that the party comprises an inexperienced bunch of amateurs who would lose the confidence of the markets.

Jenrick, an ever-flexible politician, is perfectly capable of presenting the orthodox arguments for orthodox policies. He was a Cameronian under Cameron, who voted Remain, and he even has experience of the Treasury – his first ministerial job, in Theresa May’s government, was as Exchequer secretary, the most junior of Treasury ministers, for 18 months.

He was one of the trio of junior ministers, along with Rishi Sunak and Oliver Dowden, who declared their early support for Boris Johnson and were rewarded with seats in his cabinet. Jenrick became housing secretary and announced a bold plan to relax planning law, allowing Johnson to declare that it was time to “build, build, build”. A year later, in what was described at the time as the least surprising U-turn since the prime-ministerial Range Rover had to turn round in Downing Street (which is a cul-de-sac), the plan was abandoned.

Jenrick was better known for owning so many houses that he couldn’t decide which one to lock down in under Covid regulations, and then for admitting that he had unlawfully given planning permission to the pornographer Richard Desmond to build blocks of flats in London’s Docklands.

Johnson sacked him, but he came back under Truss and then became a Farageist as immigration minister in Sunak’s government, under Suella Braverman as home secretary. He resigned after a year of presiding unhappily over the “Boriswave” of quadrupled net immigration.

Instead of giving Jenrick the Home Office brief, however, Farage has given him the task of de-risking Reform’s unformed economic policy so that it doesn’t become a distraction from immigration, which remains the party’s unique selling proposition.

Yesterday he said: “More than any party, we are going to take care with your money. We’re going to look after your money as you would.” Reeves used to say the same. This turned out to mean, in her case, paying Mauritius to take over territory to which it has no claim, and overruling civil servants to pay off the cabinet secretary.

Jenrick looked extremely pleased during his speech to have won the tussle with Tice over the right to be chancellor if Reform wins the election. But I suspect he wants the job because it would be the most important post apart from being prime minister, not because there is any evidence that he would be any good at it.