Mrs Badenoch: Jenrick is a pastiche Right-winger. He had nothing to say about world affairs

Could this really be the end of the Tory psychodrama? 

After a bruising week that has seen Kemi Badenoch sack Robert Jenrick for plotting to defect to Reform, only for the former shadow justice secretary to fall into the arms of Nigel Farage, the Tory leader is trying to progress to “more important matters”.

After I leave her Wimbledon home following a 40-minute interview in which she trashed her former Conservative colleague, I receive a WhatsApp message which simply reads: “It’s time to move on from Robert Jenrick.”

That may well be – but not before the mother of three has set the record straight on everything that has been said and done since she announced on Thursday that she was sacking her former leadership rival after discovering “irrefutable evidence” that he was conspiring to defect “in the most damaging way”.

Reflecting on the last extraordinary 72 hours in the kitchen of her Victorian semi – her husband Hamish and three children milling around upstairs – she expresses relief at Mr Jenrick’s departure, admitting: “A weight has been lifted off everybody’s shoulders.”

Insisting that the new Reform MP for Newark never got over losing the leadership race to her in November 2024, she reveals she knew he was scheming for weeks before being presented with his proposed defection speech by a fellow Tory MP.

“For a long time there were rumours and indications, but nothing that met the standard of proof. I gave him the benefit of the doubt deliberately,” she says. “If I had acted earlier, people would have accused me of insecurity or trying to dispatch a rival. I wanted to be absolutely certain – bomb-proof – before acting. That’s how I operate.”

I wonder how angry she was when she recorded the video that sealed his fate.

“I wasn’t angry, because I wasn’t surprised. I’d been hearing so much about this. Some people said I should offer him shadow chancellor. I never offered him shadow chancellor. I asked him if he was looking for a move, and he said no.

“When I was initially putting the shadow cabinet together, he wanted everybody’s job. Now I feel vindicated because he would still have done this no matter what he got – because the only job he wanted was mine, and I’m the leader. That’s the reality. It’s always sad when someone leaves the party, but for many of us, this has actually been cathartic.

“There is no universe in which he beats me, so he’s chosen to leave and pursue his shenanigans elsewhere.”

Nadhim Zahawi, the former chancellor, was another Tory who defected to Reform because he didn’t get a job, she claims, saying: “He begged and begged for a peerage. Multiply begged.”

Mr Jenrick has since accused Mrs Badenoch and her team of being unwilling to change, arguing: “They aren’t sorry for the damage they’ve done.”

In a searing article for The Telegraph, which echoed his defection speech, he insisted: “Both main parties broke Britain. Both are dominated by those without the competence or backbone needed to fix it. Both parties, if judged by their actions, are committed to a set of ideas that have failed and are failing.”

Mrs Badenoch responds: “I had the competence and the backbone to get rid of him, though, didn’t I? His defection itself symbolises who he is: disorganised, dishonest, bungling.”

Warming to her theme, she points out that Mr Jenrick served in the five Tory governments he now claims failed the country and suggests he “cried” when Rishi Sunak made him immigration minister because he “didn’t support the Rwanda Bill, only to champion it later”.

She explains: “He was immigration minister when the bill was being toughened. He resigned rather than do the work. He opposed it at one point, championed it later, and criticised the people who initiated it. That inconsistency defines his record.”

He didn’t do the work on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights either, she claims: “I asked Rob, as shadow justice secretary, to do the work. He didn’t do anything. And so I asked David Wolfson, and he produced a proper report. That’s what a team player does. Rob just said, ‘We need to leave’, and that’s that.

“The difference between him and me is that I brought the party with me. He was going to split the party.”

Mr Jenrick has been disparaging about former colleagues such as Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, and James Cleverly, the former home secretary, but Mrs Badenoch insists: “The immigration numbers were coming down under James.”

She also heaps praise on Nick Timothy, Mr Jenrick’s replacement, as someone who has “worked forensically” on Islamist extremism, pointing out that without him, Craig Guildford, the West Midlands Chief Constable, who bungled the Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban, “would still be in a job”.

Back to Mr Jenrick, though. 

As well as accusing him of “doing wokery” as a Treasury minister, leaving her to “clean up” when she replaced Simon Clarke, his successor, she refers to the time he was sacked as housing minister in Boris Johnson’s 2021 reshuffle after being forced to admit that his decision to grant planning permission to a controversial development by the former media mogul Richard Desmond had been unlawful.

“He’s the one who did the damage,” she says. “There are many things which happened under Conservatives, and I’ve acknowledged many of those mistakes, but they happened under previous leaders. He made mistakes too. He was one of the people who helped create a reputation that we were in it for ourselves.

“The Richard Desmond affair was very damaging to the party. There were no scandals with me. I never got sacked. I got promoted and promoted. So many of the things which he accuses the party of – he’s really accusing himself. It’s almost like he wrote a speech about himself and then applied it to everybody else.”

‘Jenrick is a Right-wing pastiche’

Labelling Mr Jenrick – once described as “Robert Generic” for his One Nation views – as a Right-wing “pastiche”, she adds: “Where was he when we were fighting trans activists and for single-sex spaces? Where was he when people were saying that Britain was a racist country and Covid was killing everybody? He was quiet. 

“Where was he when we were criticising net zero? He was quiet. Where was he when we were doing Brexit? He was a Remainer.”

On his defection speech, she accuses Mr Jenrick of being “inward-looking and performative”.

“As Charles Moore pointed out in The Telegraph, he said nothing about Russia’s war in Europe. Nothing about China’s growing economic and security penetration. Nothing about Iran, North Korea, cyber warfare, AI, or the erosion of the rules-based order. Instead, it was narrow, inward-looking and performative.

“Reform presents itself as insurgent and anti-establishment, yet it displays no serious interest in national security at all. It’s not just the fact that their leader in Wales was taking bribes from Russia, but that they are afraid to speak seriously about hostile states, alliances, defence, intelligence, or economic security, and when they aren’t afraid, they don’t know what to say.

“Worse, Reform repeatedly chooses to attack the Conservatives when Labour is on the ropes, actively distracting from moments when the Government should be held to account. The imminent approval of the Chinese super-embassy, which Reform has no opinion on, is a case in point. Starmer’s failure on national security is different, but just as dangerous.”

But what of legitimate criticism that the Conservative Party has drifted to the Left since Margaret Thatcher?

Reminding me that she has threatened to eject any closet Liberal Democrats who don’t support her manifesto at the next general election, she says: “Everybody worries about, ‘Oh, there’s secret wet under the bed’ but there is a bigger problem and it’s in all the parties, that’s the real reason we’re in such a mess. 

“It’s not that people were too on the Left or too on the Right. It’s that some people have gone into politics not to do the graft, but to do things that are going to get them on TV.

“This self-promotion thing in this age of social media is now destabilising for governments. Keir Starmer has the same problem now. Look at Wes Streeting, strutting around the place. Look at Angela Rayner. 

“It’s all about, ‘Look at me. Look at me. Aren’t I fabulous?’ That is the thing that is really destroying politics today. That’s the thing that we have got to get rid of. I’ve never been interested in being some kind of celebrity.

“When it comes to leadership elections, a lot of it is actually about character. And I won because people liked my conviction. I’ve been consistent. I don’t flip-flop all over the place. I know what I believe. I know what I stand for. Robert has a pastiche of what he thinks the Right-wing is, and then he performs towards it. It’s always been about his personal ambition. 

“Now we have an opportunity. We can now see a future where we are a sensible party, centre-Right, visibly Right-wing. I don’t want people to be confused about what we’re offering. We’re going back to core principles of conservatism, but the kind that you can be proud of.”

Any Tory thinking of following in Mr Jenrick’s footsteps, beware. Mr Farage has set the May 7 local elections as the deadline for any further defections, but Mrs Badenoch’s message is clear: “We are no longer tolerating this kind of behaviour from MPs. That era is over. Those who want to play games, plot, or undermine from within will not be indulged. The public are sick of it, and frankly, so are we.

“We now have the most Right-wing Conservative leadership in a long time. We’re leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero, focusing on fiscal responsibility, and getting people off benefits. If you want to leave now, that tells me you’re not interested in the Conservative agenda – you’re interested in polling. If you want to chase polls, Reform is there. 

“If people are plotting, they will be out. This psychodrama must end. We will be swift and we will be brutal and I’m speaking for the whole shadow cabinet when I say that. We are done with this.”

Does she believe, as Mr Jenrick and Mr Farage do, that “Britain is broken”?

“Some systems are broken, yes – but Britain is not broken. I deal in hope and solutions. Running around shouting ‘everything is broken’ without offering answers is not a strategy. We’re offering solutions: welfare reform, fixing business rates, abolishing stamp duty, growing the economy.

“I want to get back to talking about Labour’s failures and fixing the country.

“Getting Britain working again means fixing our economy and fixing our country and that means putting our national interest first and rebuilding our defences – otherwise we will end up being poodles as the US annexes Greenland and we’re slapped with tariffs because we have not shown any strength.”

Some have suggested that there is still a considerable rump of “wet” Conservatives holding the party back.

“The direction of a party is set by its leader,” she responds. “If the leader is clear, people either fall in line or leave. We’re not doing witch hunts, but anyone who won’t sign up to the manifesto won’t be standing at the next election. That’s been clear.”

Both Mrs Badenoch and Mr Farage have ruled out the idea of uniting the Right to face off the prospect of a progressive coalition. What? Even if it means a fate worse than Starmer, with Labour joining with the Liberal Democrats, then Greens – and even Jeremy Corbyn and the Scottish National Party?

“The Right is not a single, homogenous bloc,” she insists. “Many people on the Right actively dislike Reform. Trying to ‘unite’ risks losing just as many voters as it gains. Reform isn’t interested in fixing the country – they’re interested in disruption. We are not offering the same thing, and I don’t want voters to think we are.”

The economy will be Mrs Badenoch’s central focus as she prepares to fight what promises to be a bruising set of local elections in three months’ time.

“It will be tough,” she admits. “But it will be better than last year. Other oppositions took decades to recover. We’re doing it in three years. Because we’re honest about trade-offs. Reform wants to nationalise companies, expand benefits, scrap fiscal discipline – all with borrowed money.

“We have a golden economic rule. We’re not going to saddle our children with debt. A strong economy underpins everything: borders, defence, public services. Stronger economy, stronger country, stronger borders, stronger Britain. That’s what we’re focused on.”

A few hours later, she WhatsApps again: “Is it too late to squeeze in: “We’re for national interest, not self-interest.” Message received, Kemi, loud and clear.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]