Nasty Jenrick has become everything Kemi was elected to be
Will the real leader of the opposition please stand up? Up pops Rob Jenrick, on his toes, hand waving, shouting, 'Me, me, me!' – while Kemi refuses to answer such a clichéd question from the gotcha media.
There was a whiff of 'politics is beneath me' when Kemi sauntered into CCHQ at 11.30am to give a speech about 'LABOUR'S JOBS TAX', a slogan plastered across the side of what looked like an abandoned mattress (in fact a portable white stage turned on its side).
This was the most depressing presser I've ever attended. It was conducted in a large corridor adjacent to a snack machine and the gent's loos – they call it the Eric Pickles Suite – with nary a coffee nor a croissant in sight. When Kemi said, 'there is a business I've visited in the election that says it has closed down', I wondered if this was it.
Being in Opposition ain't easy; people ignore you. So, get their attention! Pledge to deport the Quakers. Slap a striking bin man. Instead, Team Kemi has tried to make a virtue out of silence, holding off on policy, rambling about philosophy – 'what would Durkheim say about VAT?' – and toning down the crazy lady qualities that members voted for.
By contrast, Bobby J has become everything Kemi was elected to be. A nasty b----. He embarrassed the Government into opposing the Sentencing Council's racist anti-racist guidelines, and then took credit – shameless but deserved – for the council's last-minute about turn.
Even Labour has realised the new guidelines are PC gone bananas, hence Shabana Mahmood delivered a statement to the Commons decrying activism-from-the-bench and promising 'equality before the law' (what has turned Keir Starmer into a judicial conservative? Are he and his family watching Rumpole of the Bailey on ITVX?!).
What was striking about Jenrick's reply was how personal it was, accusing Mahmood of sitting 'on her hands' and displaying 'incompetence'. 'She's decided to be undecided; resolute to be irresolute; empowered to be impotent.'
Jenrick read out evidence of the justice department's embrace of 'cultural relativism' and concluded: 'It's her department. It's black and white. It is two-tier justice.'
The press gallery gasped. Of course, he meant 'it's IN black and white' – ie written down – but in a different age, MPs would jump on that slip as proof of bigotry, making comparisons to Enoch Powell. Ah, but nowadays the river runs red with Labour rosettes...
Ignoring Jenrick's snafu, one lefty MP after another congratulated Mahmood on her decisive surrender to the Opposition. Graham Stringer even suggested the guilty parties on the council resign or be sacked. Diane Abbott alone – her hands trembling, which only gives her last stand for socialism more dignity – made the case for judicial independence, while Plaid Cymru revealed that black men are over-represented most in Welsh prisons. It's a curious feature of the nationalists that they love talking about how dreadful their nations are.
Yes, Jenrick was the winner, having changed policy and made the Tories appear more relevant than Reform. He's a model employee to a psychotic degree – and a lesson for us all. If you ever apply for a job and don't get it, just show up to work the next day and pretend that you did.
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