March 6, 2025 - 10:15am
Kemi Badenoch has a Robert Jenrick problem. He hasn’t been disloyal to her — just more impressive.
It doesn’t help that he keeps getting meaty issues to lead on. The latest is the Sentencing Council guidance that would make it easier for criminals to avoid custodial sentences if they’re “from an ethnic minority, a cultural minority, and/or faith minority community”, by automatically qualifying them for pre-sentencing reports.
It’s another two-tier outrage — and Jenrick hasn’t been slow to say so. Of course, as Shadow Justice Secretary, that’s his job, but he’s also fond of venturing well beyond his brief.
Take the Chagos Island controversy. While it involves aspects of international law, it is first and foremost a Foreign Office matter. And yet Jenrick made a widely-shared video last week presenting the arguments against the proposed handover to the government of Mauritius.
Another example was the Tory response to Donald Trump’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week. “I’m sickened by that degrading spectacle,” Jenrick tweeted at 18:54 that evening. Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel didn’t tweet for another 22 minutes, while Badenoch’s went out at 19:18. All three made good statements; however, Jenrick’s was not only the fastest but also the most powerful, winning praise from unexpected quarters.
Consider, too, his mini-documentaries for GB News. The most recent concerned the theft of tools from tradesmen and the failure of the police to deal with this livelihood-destroying scourge. A matter for the Shadow Home Secretary? Perhaps, but no one told Jenrick.
Yet it’s not him holding forth on matters beyond his brief that’s the biggest problem for Badenoch. The greater provocation is that Jenrick is actually quite good. We’ve had years of Boris Johnson busking it, Liz Truss being Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak being awkward and Badenoch stumbling into trouble, but Jenrick is cracking the Tory comms problem.
Of course, he’s not infallible. He certainly slipped up during the leadership contest, allowing Badenoch to maintain her momentum. Sometimes, he speaks out on subjects he doesn’t fully understand, as with his recent statement that energy produced from small modular nuclear reactors would be “cheap and reliable” (a rash claim for a technology that has never been commercially deployed anywhere in the Western world). Still, no other Conservative has shown a greater willingness to up their game.
It’s often said that Jenrick is still running for leader, but it might be more accurate to say he’s running an alternative leadership. There’s not much a Tory boss can do in Opposition apart from develop new ideas and communicate them effectively, and on that front he’s leaving his colleagues in the dust.
The question now is what Badenoch can do about it. If she sacks him, she could precipitate her own downfall — or, more disastrously for the Tories, his defection to Reform UK. Alternatively, she could confine him to his own brief. Tory MPs have already been told to stop sounding off on social media, but Jenrick won’t be easily silenced.
Much better to go the other way, then, and promote him. The Conservative Party currently lacks a deputy leader, so why not give Jenrick the job and the mission of overhauling both policy and communications? He obviously has the ambition and the aptitude, so Badenoch needs to make his successes her successes — before it’s too late.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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Subscribe“ or, more disastrously for the Tories, his defection to Reform UK”
Probably the best outcome for the country.
It was a shrewd move by Badenoch to give him the Justice portfolio. It seemed like sidelining at the time but, now we can see we’re under the rule of lawyers, it’s a key role for the Opposition.
Trouble is, every time I hear him make some comments on sentencing or immigration or whatever it reminds me who was in charge just a few months ago.
If he ever gets into the leadership I suspect the media will unearth the dodgy deal he did with Dirty Desmond giving him planning permission.
Yes, such as… “I’m sickened by that degrading spectacle,” regarding the Oval Office incident. The far wiser option would’ve been to have waited, rather than knee-jerking to be the first to comment. To have waited to have given greater thought to the context, and what exactly was happening.
It certainly wasn’t pretty, but Zelensky degraded himself, or at the very least fell into a trap whilst pulling the trapdoor open himself, and which he’s now being forced to backtrack upon.
Jenrick just doesn’t have the authority of a leader. Look at Trump. Look at Vance. That’s not to say Badenoch does either, and if she does, she’s taking a heck of long time to warm to her task.
Looks like Zelensky is seeking to rely on the “coalition of the willing” to allow Ukraine to try to “win”.
As that will apparently need US “security backing” he, and they are likely to be disappointed.
Had Zelensky signed the agreement with Trump instead of trying to manoeuvre Trump into some sort of guarantee a peace agreement would be in sight.
None of these people supporting Zelensky seem to have asked themselves whether a return to Ukraine’s 1991 borders is at all feasible – or even desirable. If Zelensky were to succeed he would gift his successors with a permanent civil war. Trump’s strategy of bullying Zelensky into surrendering Crimea and Donbas – as brutal and thuggish as he has been in pursuing it – actually makes good sense.
Tactically Author is right – promote him and give him a brief that forces him out of the shadows when he might like to hide and pick his moments as he’s doing now.
This of course was all inevitable given how the votes in the leadership contest divided.
To date Kemi been weaker than many hoped. I like her, although not of the Right. But she’s got to lose that brittleness, touch of arrogance and be more savvy. She’s got to do more media and learn not to say daft things. Early days though. Thatcher was seen as a stop gap for some time.