Closing summary
The “arsonists” who tanked the reputation of the Conservatives are still in charge of the party, Robert Jenrick has said as he and the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, trade blows a day after his dramatic defection to Reform UK. Giving his first interview since his announcement on Thursday, the former shadow justice secretary said the Conservatives had not changed since the election, while defending himself against allegations of lying from his former party leader.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said Nigel Farage has done her “spring cleaning”, after Robert Jenrick defected to Reform UK. The Conservative party leader told GB News: “I’m just glad that Nigel Farage is doing my spring cleaning for me. He’s taking away my problems. The Conservative party is... even more united and stronger, because we’ve lost someone who was not a team player.”
In his interview with the BBC’s Laura Kunessberg, Reform’s Robert Jenrick defended his role in the previous Conservative government. He said he “always tried to challenge the system” and “worked like crazy” to bring down immigration numbers.
Labour said Robert Jenrick was “one of the arsonists who inflicted chaos and decline” on Britain while serving as a Tory minister under the previous government. Citing comments made by Nigel Farage before Jenrick defected to Reform UK on Thursday, Labour chairwoman Anna Turley said: “In the words of his new party leader: Robert Jenrick is a fraud. He himself is one of the arsonists who inflicted chaos and decline on Britain while the Tories were in government.”
Ed Davey said Robert Jenrick “helped wreck the NHS” while serving as a health minister in the previous Tory government. Responding to Jenrick’s BBC interview after his defection to Reform UK, the Liberal Democrat leader said: “People are fed up of hearing that Britain is broken from the very people like Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage who broke it in the first place.”
Craig Guildford is to retire as chief constable of West Midlands police, the Guardian understands. His departure comes after an official inquiry found his force used “exaggerated and untrue” intelligence to justify a ban on Israeli football fans. The decision is scheduled to be officially announced at 4pm on Friday by the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, Simon Foster.
In other news, Nigel Farage has fallen victim to another prank on the paid video service Cameo, this time paying tribute to the child sexual abuse offender Ian Watkins. Cameo allows fans to pay celebrities to make personalised video messages, with the Reform party leader offering his services from £78.45. In a 27-second video posted online by John Smith, who requested the clip, Farage called the former Lostprophets singer, who was killed in prison last year, “a good man, a really good guy” who “loved his children”.
The “arsonists” who tanked the reputation of the Conservatives are still in charge of the party, Robert Jenrick has said as he and the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, trade blows a day after his dramatic defection to Reform UK.
Giving his first interview since his announcement on Thursday, the former shadow justice secretary said the Conservatives had not changed since the election, while defending himself against allegations of lying from his former party leader.
He told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Friday: “I came to the conclusion over the course of the last year or so that … the party hadn’t changed, that the people who’d made those mistakes were still sat around the shadow cabinet table, the arsonists were still in control of the party, and that this was not a party that was capable of even understanding what it had got wrong, let alone fixing it.”
Jenrick insisted “I could not have been franker” about his intentions, despite telling the Conservative chief whip on Thursday he would never defect – an act that Badenoch said showed he “tells a lot of lies”.
In her own set of broadcast interviews hours earlier, Badenoch said: “You can’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. This is a man who was asked yesterday morning, ‘Are you going to defect?’ And he said ‘never’ to the chief whip.”
She added: “People from Reform and other Conservative party members have been bringing stuff to me about the actions he had been doing to undermine the party, and I kept giving him a chance. So I’m just glad that Nigel Farage is doing my spring cleaning for me. He’s taking away my problems.”
The public row between the two former Tory leadership rivals comes as both parties digest the news of Reform’s most significant defection yet.
Jenrick’s move has been largely welcomed among Reform MPs and members, but also by some Conservatives who say it has strengthened Badenoch’s position in her own party.
