Four days before Robert Jenrick was kicked out of the Tories for planning to defect to Reform UK, he spoke “at length” with Kemi Badenoch on the phone about party strategy. The week before he had sat through a shadow cabinet awayday taking copious notes.
While the Tory leader had been aware for some time of speculation over her shadow justice secretary’s future, she had no hard proof of his plans, so it was business as usual. That all changed just 24 hours after their one-to-one conversation.
On Monday, senior figures in Badenoch’s office were sent screenshots of what one said was “irrefutably” Jenrick’s entire resignation speech from what sources claimed was a mole in his office, along with the accompanying media plan.
His speech, which was double-spaced for easy reading, implored his fellow Tories to defect with him as their party had “lost its way”, singling out senior figures such as Priti Patel and Mel Stride for criticism. He added that Nigel Farage was the “right person” to lead the country.
Despite all the rumours, the Tory leader’s top team were still shocked by the betrayal. Jenrick’s aides had been openly speculating at party events about when he would choose to defect.
“It was all presented jokingly, but of course it wasn’t a joke. We all thought he would wait till May to see if he still had a chance to depose Kemi. But that became more and more obvious that that is not going to happen,” one party source said.
Shortly after receiving the screenshots, a journalist who is close to – and trusted by – the Badenoch operation told the team they had heard from a close friend of Jenrick that he was definitely making the leap, sources told the Guardian.
Badenoch’s senior aides were already aware that Farage was due to appear on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show this Sunday and feared he would drop heavy hints before announcing the defection the next morning, to maximise the damage.
They immediately told Badenoch – and advised her to sack Jenrick and kick him out the party. “Kemi was regretful; she wished we weren’t in this position,” one source said. “But she was absolutely clear and focused: Rob had to go.”
There was no attempt to win over Jenrick. “We knew we had to act immediately. If we challenged him first, there was a risk of him going straight out and doing it anyway,” a Tory source said.
Badenoch left it to her chief whip, Rebecca Harris, to phone Jenrick, a move which one ally described as “delicious”. Speaking to Harris, the MP angrily denied he was planning to defect, one Tory shadow cabinet source alleged.
The Tory leader’s ambush – a video message where she laid out the charges – was hastily recorded just before. She released her video just after 11am, timed to coincide with Farage’s press conference in Scotland, knowing journalists would confront the Reform UK leader.
The video was also emailed out to all Conservative party members with a message from Badenoch, promising them they “deserve better” than MPs who stand for the party and then defect.
Farage, at his press conference in Scotland, also seemed caught on the hop. “It sounds to me like she’s panicked,” he said of Badenoch, insisting there was no deal done with Jenrick – yet.
“I’ll give him a ring this afternoon,” he told journalists. “I might even buy him a pint.” Pressed on Jenrick’s defection destination, Farage replied: “Could be the Lib Dems? I don’t know!”
One former cabinet minister said Badenoch had acted swiftly in a way that Rishi Sunak should have done as prime minister while allies of Jenrick plotted against him in No 10.
Badenoch’s team were euphoric to have got one over on her former leadership rival. “Jenrick’s clever-dick people, they’re not so clever after all,” one senior Tory said.
“She’s blown him up with his own grenade, very decisive, no pissing about, fair play to her,” another added.
Condemnation of Jenrick from across the Conservative party was swift – and brutal. One Tory MP called him a “coward”. Another said he was “a traitor”, dismissing him as “ruthlessly ambitious and unprincipled”.
“Jenrick was a snake in the grass in the Rishi years, you cannot trust him. There was so much deceit and dishonesty and leaking stuff to journalists from the people who worked with him. We never dealt with these people properly then. We should have bulleted them a lot earlier,” a former cabinet minister said.
Even among some of her Conservative sceptics, Badenoch drew widespread praise for acting decisively. “She has got some cojones,” one MP said. “Iron Lady with a titanium overlay.”
“She’s done absolutely the right thing,” another senior MP said. “People need to realise that she’s serious, has the guts to sack people when they deserve it, that we have standards, that people who go that way can’t come back, and that we are not a populist Reform-lite party.”
Jenrick’s star with the Conservatives has waned since the party’s October conference, when Badenoch impressed MPs and the membership there, while he became embroiled in a racism row. Her performances at PMQs have improved, and her ratings have gradually crept up, encouraging some sceptics to stick with her – for now.
Jenrick went to ground. With the wind in her sails, Badenoch flew to Edinburgh to campaign for the Holyrood elections – taking in a quick whisky tour at the Johnnie Walker Experience with Scots colleagues. Sources would not divulge whether they raised a glass to Jenrick’s sacking.
But the breathlessness did not last long. Rumours began circling that Farage had, indeed, got a defection deal with Jenrick over the line.
The pair had begun talking as long ago as last September – the month after the Reform leader called him a “fraud” – and there were rumours of a lunch in December, while Jenrick dined recently with Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice.
A scheduled press conference about Reform’s plans for a judicial review of delays to local elections at the party’s headquarters on the 24th floor of Millbank Tower, central London, later in the afternoon gave the opportunity.
Within moments of standing up, Farage confirmed the worst-kept secret in Westminster: that Jenrick was Reform’s highest-profile defection yet. But he told the packed room the MP hadn’t been planning to join Reform UK anytime soon and “might not have joined at all”.
Twisting the knife, he told Badenoch: “You’ve handed me on a plate the man that is by far the most popular figure [in the Tory party].” He announced the arrival of his new recruit … but nothing happened.
For a very long two minutes – which one attender described as “like the bride being late to her wedding” – Reform UK appeared to have lost Jenrick. “Wouldn’t this be a funny way to end this day,” Farage said.
The mood of the room shifted away from Farage’s jovial tone as Jenrick finally swept into the room and launched into an earnest speech about his political philosophy, waiting more than 20 minutes to even mention Reform or his new boss.
Railing against his “rotten” former party, he laid into his former shadow cabinet colleagues Stride and Patel personally for causing failures in welfare and immigration – just as Badenoch had predicted from his leaked speech.
Jenrick looked uneasy as journalists repeatedly pressed him about his honesty and trustworthiness, insisting he had put aside his own personal ambitions to be Tory leader in order to help make Farage prime minister.
He was confronted with evidence that he had told a Telegraph reporter he would “never, ever defect” just last Friday, and admitted that he had actually already resolved to defect some time before Badenoch sacked him.
Jenrick’s longtime allies, Sam Armstrong and Jake Ryan, watched from the sidelines, while Reform figures James Orr and Tice, in the audience, nodded along to his claims that “Britain is broken”.
But one notable absence was the party’s policy chief, Zia Yusuf, who has previously expressed contempt for Jenrick for being a “traitor” over his actions as immigration minister. Farage admitted Yusuf was suspicious of former Tories who had been in government – a sentiment no doubt shared by many in Reform.
Later, it emerged that Jenrick had been delayed because he had got lost in the corridors of Millbank Tower, getting stuck one floor below the press conference location after failing to find his way up the stairs.
He will be hoping to now navigate Reform’s labyrinthine politics with greater success.
