The personal ambitions of Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage spell difficulty for Reform

Kemi Badenoch will benefit from the former Conservative minister’s defection, writes David Aaronovitch

In the last year or so two patterns have emerged in the political activities of the member of parliament for Newark, Robert Jenrick. The first has been a series of photo opportunities designed always to depict him as a crusader: protecting Britain’s past and correcting Britain’s present. He has been filmed up in a Spitfire to coincide with an article for The Telegraph complaining that the youth of the country don’t know what the Battle of Britain was. He has been filmed up a ladder during the height of the flagging campaign, running a flag up his own flagpole. He has been filmed at Tube stations in London trying to intercept fare-dodgers.

Jenrick’s less filmic contribution to what has been termed the national “psychodrama” has been to make speeches up and down the country to various Conservative groups, the contents of which have leaked out afterwards. The first was revealed last year, following yet another filmed visit – this time to Birmingham – after which he complained that in one area he was the only white face to be seen, and that this indicated a failure of integration.

The second appeared at the end of this week, when audio of his remarks to another group of Tories somehow found its way into the national press. Reform, Jenrick had said, was “not a serious party”, and Nigel Farage “couldn’t run a five-a-side team”.

You might think that the bungled manner of his leaving the Conservative Party suggested a distinct lack of competence, just as the way in which the woman who beat him for the Conservative Party leadership in 2024 dealt with his impending treachery cast her in a better light.

Robert Jenrick denied personal ambition played a role in his decision to join Reform UK after being sacked from the Conservative shadow cabinet (Jordan Pettitt/PA) (PA Wire)

But for those more interested in the implications than the theatre, there was the sight of Nigel Farage saying that a man whom he had previously deprecated was wonderful; Robert Jenrick saying that a party he had previously dismissed was now the only conceivable choice for Britain; and Kemi Badenoch saying that the man she had herself chosen to hold a senior position in the shadow cabinet was in fact a duplicitous snake. All this emphasised what might be described as the anti-symbiosis of Reform and the Conservative Party. For one to thrive, the other must fail. So will Jenrick help Reform to thrive?

After Jenrick finally accomplished his defection, one enterprising magazine editor invented a philosophy for him, dubbed “Jenrickism”. Jenrickism would apparently give substance to Farage’s otherwise empty populism. But apart from hostility to migrants, this philosophy seemed to consist of wanting to destroy everything that had happened to Britain between the fall of Margaret Thatcher and the beginning of 2026 – including, of course, the 21 years that Jenrick’s party was in government, 10 of them with him in parliament supporting it, or serving as a minister himself.

So what does he bring? There are two schools of thought here. The first is that so many Tories have now defected to Reform in order to give it some semblance of governmental experience that the only governmental experience it now has is precisely the governmental experience that Reform argues has been so catastrophic.

The other school argues that the defections somehow show that Reform is the party with “momentum” – a serious party for serious people. Comparisons are being made with that “mould-breaking” moment in 1981 when the original Social Democratic Party was formed.

This parallel is flawed. The 1981 defecting “gang of four” consisted of Roy Jenkins, a former reforming home secretary and chancellor of the Exchequer; Shirley Williams, a former education secretary and at that point one of the most popular politicians in the country; David Owen, a former foreign secretary; and even Bill Rodgers had done a decent stint as transport secretary.

None of those senior ex-Tories who have defected to Reform can conceivably claim such experience or such eminence. In the case of Nadhim Zahawi, his eight-week chancellorship was the product of a deserted Boris Johnson’s desperation. And probably the least said about Nadine Dorries as culture secretary – and Liz Truss’s short-lived party chairman, Jake Berry – the better.

But while we can assume that none of these now has ambitions to be prime minister, the absolute opposite is true of Robert Jenrick. And if you don’t believe that he brings fabulous governmental experience to Reform’s otherwise empty table, and you’re not convinced by the argument that he is the vehicle for a coherent philosophy of government or politics, the only thing you can be relatively sure of is that at some point he will want Nigel Farage’s job. And Nigel Farage has a positively Italian Renaissance way of dealing with people who want his job.

Given this almost inevitable eventual collision, you could make the argument that Jenrick’s admission to Reform is meant to encourage others to do likewise. In his Jenrick-unveiling press conference this week, Nigel Farage suggested that Conservatives should defect now because he might not let them in after this May’s local elections.

This feels like a pretty standard “special time-limited subscription offer” to me. The one thing you can be sure of is that the offer will be repeated. As long as you’re not Tommy Robinson on the one hand and Liz Truss on the other, Reform will take you whenever you want to join.

So I score this one for Badenoch. The countdown to the Farage vs Jenrick welterweight fight has begun.