Robert Jenrick's tilt at power could kill off the Tories

Times

26-04-2025

I've always wanted to be part of a high-level conspiracy and for about an hour last week I thought it had finally happened. A message popped up on my phone to say that Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, had included me in a group chat with David Cameron, George Osborne and others. 'RJ for PM!' declared one of the members. Ah, I thought, it's a coup! They're at it again!
But what did it have to do with me? Was I going to be the journalist added accidentally to the Tory equivalent of the Yemen-bombing Signal chat? I stayed quiet and waited. But Jenrick soon realised his mistake and started removing people from the chat: in alphabetical order. He'd included so many it took him quite some time to get to the Fs.
Perhaps this was, as he later suggested, a group created to back his efforts in the London marathon. But it certainly fits a time-honoured Tory pattern of leadership positioning before an expected election defeat. Kemi Badenoch will lead her troops into the slaughter of the local elections on Thursday and will end up wounded and vulnerable. Her party will be dismayed, annoyed — and looking for someone to blame. It may revert to its form as a regicidal death cult, which seems to elect leaders solely for the pleasure of finishing them off.
Some are even talking about merging with — or, rather, agreeing to be swallowed by — Reform UK. Badenoch has ruled this out, saying it's madness to join forces with a party that wants to kill you. Robert Jenrick has been more nuanced: so much so he has been nicknamed 'Nigel's chancellor' by those who think that's his real aim. He told a private meeting with students he was determined to unite the right 'one way or another'. His comments were, inevitably, recorded and leaked: cue more headlines of Tory mayhem.
Watching all of this, head in hands, are the remaining Conservative council leaders whose own WhatsApp group has developed a gallows humour. Are the MPs doing this because they can't help themselves, one of them asked, 'or do they just hate Tory councillors and use it as a strategy to reduce our numbers?' One chairman of a Midlands constituency said he had written to Jenrick 'asking him to desist from further contact' and stop his 'frankly embarrassing' and 'thinly veiled leadership push'.
Polls suggest the Conservatives will lose about half the seats they defend. It's mainly Tory-run councils up for election this time, last contested four years ago when the party was far more popular. It's also a test for Nigel Farage: he's top in the national polls, but will his party emerge with the biggest vote share? Can he beat Ukip's old record for council elections? Will we see the Tory-gobbling earthquake he has long been predicting?
If it doesn't quite work out that way, the Tories may find they have more of a base to build on. But this week Badenoch is being asked not about her plans for recovery but the antics of her justice spokesman. This will cement the impression of the Tories as the party of psychodrama rather than answers. That whatever message its leader gives, one of her would-be usurpers will be there trying to destabilise.
Jenrick has been testing the waters of cultural grievance, weaving immigration, Christianity and crime into a newly hard-edged worldview. He has taken up Elon Musk's post-riots claim that Britain is subject to politicised courts and 'two-tier justice'. He claims proof that immigration is linked to an increase in crime. Last weekend he wrote about the importance of Christianity in British public life — and berated No 10 for failing to mark 'Psalm Sunday'.
This overall idea, that Britain's Christian heritage is under threat from criminally inclined immigrants, works for some European populists. But it sits ill with the Conservative tradition of emphasising cohesion, as well as the party's record. Immigration shot up under Tory home secretaries but crime almost halved.
I remember Suella Braverman telling me about a police inspector's observation that our streets are probably safer than at any time in our history: the opposite of public perception. This was a party that wanted nothing to do with the conspiracies and innuendo wafting up from the gutter of the digital right.
Jenrick himself has only mentioned Christianity in parliament once, in support of a £30 million cultural fund — not for Salford but for Syria. It was a good cause. This was how I remember him as a minister: thoughtful, practical, evidence-led. A bit boring, but far from the trainee Faragist we see before us. Still, you can't fault his energy. He seems to have more of it than anyone else on the front bench and behaves as if no one told him the leadership race had ended (perhaps, for Tories, it never does). But his output contrasts awkwardly with his party leader, who has somehow become less visible since taking the top job.
Her famous martial spirit — the woman who can start a fight in an empty room — has not been much in evidence. The eloquence she summons in debate, especially when riled, is not being translated into her speeches or grillings of Keir Starmer. It's hard to say her leadership is going well.
But what Tory could do well now? Not Thatcher, not Churchill nor Disraeli could get around the fact the Conservatives were responsible for most of the problems they now point to. Immigration has not sent crime surging — but if it had, who would voters blame? Jenrick is quite right to protest against the Sentencing Council's proposal to treat ethnic minorities differently in courts: that would be an example of the otherwise-mythical 'two-tier justice' he talks about. But even this madness was hatched under the Tories and put out for open consultation. No one said a word.
Badenoch's strategy is to wait it all out: fix the party, then worry about the rest. Firing Jenrick would set off the civil war she's trying to prevent. She's instead running long-term policy reviews and asking colleagues to think of the 2029 election, not chase the latest political fashion.
The appeal of bad-boy populism may soon fade (see Finland's recent election) and the Trump 'vibe shift' is already souring. The most obvious vacancy in British politics is for a new party to the left of Labour. If one emerges, as we saw in Germany, the Tories could be back in contention. For some time now, the only constant in UK politics has been the speed of change.
David Cameron had a strong start as Tory leader: Badenoch has not. But he came after eight years of opposition; she had just four months. The need now is for strategic patience, deep engagement with the public and the humility to rebuild from first principle. But this depends on having a party that realises it may be just one more leadership challenge away from extinction.