Robert Jenrick is embarrassing himself

New Statesman​

a day ago

Photo by Thomas Krych / Alamy
I think when Robert Jenrick closes his eyes he sees an X feed, a long scroll of posts from accounts called things like @Elizabethansexoffender and @Rhodesianringmaster. He's far from the only senior Conservative for whom this is a problem, but this week he has taken the concerns of the online out of the cyberstew and into the real world: specifically, the London underground network. The Shadow Justice Secretary has gone vigilante, and has released a video of himself confronting fare-dodgers on TfL. 'Excuse me, do you think it's alright not to pay?' asks Jenrick, speaking to a figure whose face is a censored blur. 'Seriously, why don't you go back to the barrier and pay', says the 43-year-old MP for Newark, newly Ozempicked into the form of an Inbetweener.
Robert Jenrick's view of the UK – which holds that 'across the board the hard reality of mass migration is being covered up' and that we are living in 'Starmer's two tier Britain' – and the way it is informed by online debate cannot be separated out from his lividness about TfL. It is important to note that the version of London in the heads of committed X posters – a place where you can't go to Tesco Metro without being shivved by an asylum seeker living in a palatial council house – doesn't exist.
That is not to say, however, that our degraded public realm is not a real problem, or that people who shell out decent amounts of money on transport each week do not feel a real sense of unfairness when they see perennial fare-evasion. Quite apart from the financial hit to TfL, such a sense of living in an unfair world is not good for either individual commuters or for public trust. However, while Tory staffers might think Jenrick is the lone voice saying the unsayable on the issue of fare-dodging, they are wrong. Low-level crime and a public transport system that is worse to use than it once was – in Ken Livingstone's day, signs cautioned to keep noise from within headphones to a minimum! – are problems that all parts of the political spectrum want to address.
Striking the right tone with these things is hard, however. Starmer does an alright job, making it clear that he believes there to be no such thing as low-level crime. But (among other things, notably the contemporary party's storied communications issues) New Labour's ASBO-era has given the party a reputation for petty authoritarianism, with Starmer and his 'Respect orders' falling in this hectoring shadow. Jenrick's fellow Tory MP Neil O'Brien has had a pop at it, inveigling against spitting and loud music, and a Bakerloo line that Sadiq Khan has allowed to look 'like 70s New York'. However, his calls to make Britain 'vaguely civilised' have a swivel-eyed quality that, again, is more relatable to the X algorithm than it is to the average member of the public.
The person who has struck the right tone on this, however, is Ed Davey. The Liberal Democrats have backed a fine of up to £1000 for people playing music and videos out loud on public transport. Announcing the policy in April, the party's home affairs spokesperson Lisa Smart said: 'Far too many people dread their daily commute because of the blight of antisocial behaviour… Time and time again, I hear from people who say they feel too intimidated to speak up when someone is blasting music or other content from a phone or speaker. It's time to take a stand for the quiet majority who just want to get from A to B in peace.' Without either the problems of being a not particularly popular government or of having pickled their brains on the internet, the Liberal Democrats can sound like really, they mean it. They are successfully selling the idea that they just want Britain to be 'lovely', a place of civic unity and Gail's bakeries.
When Ed Davey says he feels your pain – you, in this instance, being someone commuting on the District line to your just-inside-top-tax-bracket job – you believe him. You're a bit cross at someone for fare-dodging, sure, but you're just trying to get on with your day. Jenrick, I assume, imagines that he is the hero of 'silent majority', the one who's doing the right thing for no reward. But manically accosting strangers before making loaded comments about Turkish barbers has only made their day worse. (It has since been revealed that Jenrick had himself been breaking TfL rules by filming without authorisation.) The voter he wants to talk to has moved across the carriage to avoid him. They've sat next to Ed Davey instead. @Elizabethansexoffender's still there though.
[See also: Kemi Badenoch is in a hole – and she keeps digging]
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