Kemi Badenoch is not well known for her political cunning. Her leadership of the Conservatives has been marked by accusations of intransigence and bluntness, often to her detriment, and an apparent indifference to the dark arts of party management. But this morning, she did something unexpected: she played politics, and played it rather well.

By sacking Robert Jenrick from the Shadow Cabinet, removing the Tory whip, and suspending his party membership before he could defect to Reform UK, Badenoch has transformed what could have been a catastrophic news day into a display of decisive leadership. The timing was no accident. Reform has a press conference scheduled for later this afternoon, and Westminster had been bracing for a major announcement.

Consider what a Jenrick defection on his own terms would have meant. Here was a man who came within touching distance of the Tory leadership just over a year ago, who has been openly touted as Badenoch’s most likely successor, and who represents one of the brightest hopes of the Conservative Right.

His departure to Nigel Farage’s party would have been front-page news for days. It would have invited inevitable questions about whether the Tories have any future at all. And it would have likely encouraged others in Jenrick’s orbit to follow.

Instead, the story today is about Badenoch’s decisiveness. She claims to have been presented with “clear, irrefutable evidence” of Jenrick’s plotting — evidence, crucially, that he was planning his defection “in a way designed to be as damaging as possible” to his colleagues. Whether or not we ever see this evidence, the way Badenoch presented it matters. Jenrick, rather than being a principled man of conviction, now looks like a schemer caught red-handed.

This puts Jenrick in an impossible position. If he goes ahead and defects to Reform, he merely confirms what Badenoch has already told the world. The impact of it is blunted. He walks into Farage’s party looking like damaged goods, a man who had to be pushed rather than one who chose to jump. And if he decides not to defect, perhaps realising the moment has been ruined, he is left as a neutered backbencher without the whip, his leadership ambitions in ruins, his reputation for political judgement shattered.

In all of this, Farage’s response was telling. Asked about Jenrick at a press conference in Scotland this morning, he was uncharacteristically cautious, admitting to “conversations” but denying any imminent agreement.

None of this solves Badenoch’s longer-term problems. The Conservative Party remains behind Reform in the polls; the local elections in May are set to produce a grim set of results; the drip-drip of defections continues. But politics is often about surviving to fight another day, and Badenoch has just demonstrated that she is not prepared to be a passive victim of events. She saw a threat coming, and she neutralised it. For a leader whose critics have questioned whether she has the ruthlessness required for the top job, this morning’s manoeuvre was a useful corrective. Badenoch, it turns out, can bite.

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Loïc Frémond advises venture capital firms on government relations.

Fremond_

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