I should begin with an apology. Last month, I described Robert Jenrick as “the most shameless man in parliament”. His office complained at the time, but I was stubborn and refused to back down. Well, it’s never too late to say you were wrong. Robert Jenrick is not simply the most shameless man in parliament. He is the most shameless man in Britain, the most shameless man on Earth. Quite possibly the most shameless man in history. It is not simply that Jenrick has no shame. He is like a black hole for shame, sucking in the embarrassment of people around him. Which will be quite handy in his new party, Reform.
Nothing became Jenrick’s time in the Conservative Party so much as the leaving of it. For years he had eased his way up the greasy pole, switching positions when necessary, a heating-seeking missile for whichever pose could help him advance, poster boy for the importance of self-belief over ability or integrity. And finally he was undone because he forgot to pick something up off a printer.
In a surprise video message on Thursday morning recorded in an undisclosed location, Kemi Badenoch announced she’d seen “irrefutable evidence” of Jenrick’s treachery. Amazingly, this turned out not simply to be “everything he said” and “everything he did”. Instead, it seems someone had found a print-out of the speech he was planning to give announcing his defection to Reform. And not just the speech: the media plan too! What Jenrick lacks in basic competence, he more than compensates for in comedy.
So Bobby J was ejected from both the Tory party and the Shadow Cabinet, like a man who has been plotting to leave his wife and comes home to find the locks changed and all his suits on the lawn. For some hours we wondered how Nigel Farage would react to the bedraggled figure now on his doorstep, complaining that if he didn’t let him in, he’d have to go and sit with Jeremy Corbyn and the other party-less MPs.
The Reform leader somehow resisted the opportunity to do the funniest thing, and instead we all piled into a small sweaty room at Reform headquarters. For Farage, a man who loves attention more than anything, it was marvellous. He chuckled away, promising more defections to come — one from Labour next week, apparently — and setting a deadline of the May local elections for anyone who wants to be accepted.
the enjoyable thing about Jenrick has always been that he was totally transparent
His big message was that if Badenoch hadn’t chucked Jenrick out, the man might never have plucked up the courage to jump. Which tells us that Farage has a fairly shrewd assessment of Jenrick’s integrity.
Then in walked Jenrick himself, sleek as ever. He launched into a shouty denunciation of the state of the country — Jenrick’s rhetorical style only really has one note, and it’s angry — that as ever raised a couple of obvious questions.
“It’s time for the truth,” he began. Usually this is the moment for a sketchwriter to ask caustically what we’ve been hearing up to now. But Jenrick delivered that comment himself, explaining that he’d been lying to us all about the state of the country for the last decade. “Britain has been in decline. Britain is in decline.” Gosh, Rob, how long have things been like that? “Twenty to thirty years.” OK, and who would you say was in government for a really significant chunk of that time?
On he went, a former Housing Secretary explaining that we hadn’t built enough homes, a former immigration minister complaining about all the immigrants. Not that this was his fault, you understand. He was let down by Boris Johnson and let down by Rishi Sunak. Boy, let down by Boris, eh? If only there’d been some clue to the Johnson character when Jenrick endorsed him to be prime minister.
It was quite hard to know what to say to all this. Jenrick insisted, deadpan, that he was putting personal ambition aside by joining the party currently leading in the polls. He just wanted to serve the country. He made a catty, nasty speech in which he denounced particularly Mel Stride and Priti Patel. What unites these people? They all have or had jobs he thinks he should have got. Another angry failson joins Reform to get the respect he deserves.
But the enjoyable thing about Jenrick has always been that he was totally transparent. That enjoyment is only increased by his apparent conviction that his manoeuvrings are completely invisible to the rest of us. As I’ve noted before, to watch him scheming is to be reminded of a toddler hiding behind a cushion. “Where’s Robert? THERE HE IS! What’s Robert up to? WHO CAN SAY?” Like so many MPs, he thinks he’s Francis Urquhart, when in fact he’s Baldrick.
This week, Reform has welcomed in Nadhim Zahawi a man sacked from government over his tax affairs and a man famous for abandoning every principle to get ahead. For decades, Farage has told us that Parliament is full of dodgy people who are only in it for themselves. Now he’s finally getting a chance to prove it.
