November 1, 2024 - 7:00am
The entire Westminster village now assumes that Kemi Badenoch will be unveiled as the new leader of the Opposition on Saturday. Chancellor Rachel Reeves even singled out the Tory contender for a spot of pre-emptive taunting during Wednesday’s Budget when she referred to workplace bullying and cuts to maternity pay.
On this occasion, the conventional wisdom in Westminster will almost certainly be proven correct. Polling of Tory grassroots members has consistently found Badenoch to be comfortably ahead of rival Robert Jenrick; the bookies’ odds are massively in her favour, and even some of her opponent’s core supporters privately admit she is on track for victory.
All of which makes Jenrick’s recent campaigning intensity and tone particularly fascinating. He could easily have dialled things down and sued for peace with Badenoch, taking satisfaction from having transformed himself from a top-30 Tory a year ago to a top-three Tory now and awaiting a plum Shadow Cabinet job offer. This would have been the orthodox strategy for someone seen to have fought an impressive campaign but from too far back to win.
Yet he has done the very opposite, getting under Badenoch’s skin by accusing her of disrespecting party members in avoiding debates with him and failing to outline her policies. More than that, he has ramped up the controversy quotient of his public utterances generally.
Looking at Jenrick’s two most recent interventions on topical issues is instructive. He went so far as to say that, far from being due reparations, many former colonies owed a “debt of gratitude” to the British Empire, leading Labour Left-winger Bell Ribeiro-Addy to brand his comments “deeply offensive and obnoxious”.
On the issue of more information tumbling out about the Southport stabbings, Jenrick’s response included the suggestion that “across the board the hard reality of mass migration is being covered up.” He singled out crime statistics as an area of particular concern.
It is not only Labour figures who are up in arms at his high-octane approach, but also figures from within the Tory establishment. Theresa May’s former chief of staff Gavin Barwell suggested: “If Robert wins on Saturday, it is clear that the Conservative Party will go full Trump/Farage, attacking our institutions and promoting online conspiracy theories.”
For once, Barwell may be onto something. For though Jenrick is unlikely to win, it does indeed seem he has taken a long-term bet on a radical Right-wing cultural movement becoming an inexorable force in our politics.
Only a couple of years ago, Badenoch was viewed as about as daring as it was possible for a Tory to be on this territory. Now, she is regarded as the safe and even relatively centrist choice by Tory grandees such as William Hague and George Osborne.
Jenrick, meanwhile, has won the belated backing of his former Home Office boss and Cambridge University contemporary Suella Braverman, while the veteran former minister John Hayes, a social conservative of the Roger Scruton school, is a key influence upon both. Lord Frost and several senior figures in the Right-wing Conservative Democratic Organisation have also converged with the trio, creating a powerful hard-Right nexus with an overall policy shopping list that has major overlaps with Reform UK.
It is possible that Badenoch, who has refused to be tied down to particular flagship policies and pledges, will in due course tick off those items herself. But it is equally possible she will tack towards the conventional establishment centre ground on some key points.
Some of Jenrick’s more careerist Parliamentary supporters may well accept frontbench jobs from Badenoch, but many of the 40 Tory MPs who voted for him in the fourth leadership ballot seem likely to sit it out alongside Jenrick, Braverman and Hayes on the backbenches.
Next week will no doubt see Badenoch winning wall-to-wall media coverage, and she is eminently capable of making a huge impact. But make no mistake: the ballad of Bobby J also has several verses yet to be sung.
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SubscribeJenrick is merely posturing. He’s a centrist through and through.
That might be true but the fact that he is staking out these positions is very interesting (and exciting). I expect them to be mainstream conservative positions in due course – especially if Trump wins next week in the USA. Jenrick 2.0 is merely trailblazing what will inevitably become the Tory manifesto by the next election – low immigration, prison works, scrap net zero, no-ground given in the culture
Jenrick is arguably corrupt, which I am sure doesn’t bother O’Flynn. Having said this though he is right about the ECHR and I liked what he said about the criminal Kaba.
Want to know how far to the right Jenrick has established himself? Ask him about his opinion of the political imprisonment of Tommy Robinson
Jenrick is a political lightweight, a man who has reversed his previous positions when in the May Govt, in order to convince the membership he is right wing.
The ultimate opportunist!
Jenrick couldn’t have got it more wrong and the suggestion that he will represent the right of the Tory party is laughable. He will descend into anonymity.
If the Tory membership elect Badenoch that will put to bed all those accusations from the left that Tory members are racists … we know who the racists are … they emerged in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, and more worryingly they are still there.