Barbs and a betrayal as Jenrick joins Reform after Badenoch gives him boot

Robert Jenrick made a dramatic defection to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on Thursday, declaring the Conservatives “rotten” and a “failed” party, after being sacked by Kemi Badenoch for plotting against her.In a high-stakes day for the future of the British right, Jenrick became the most senior Tory to switch allegiance to Reform, launching into a fiery and personal denunciation of his former colleagues in the shadow cabinet.The defection of Jenrick deepens the schism on the right of politics as Badenoch struggles to keep the Conservatives together in the face of a string of high-profile moves to Reform.The former shadow justice secretary, who stood for the Tory leadership against Badenoch, said the Conservative party in Westminster “isn’t sorry, it doesn’t get it, it hasn’t changed, it won’t change, it can’t change”.“In opposition, it is easy to paper over these cracks, but the divisions and delusions are still there,” he said at a hastily reorganised press conference with Farage in Westminster on Thursday

‘Not so clever after all’: how Robert Jenrick was ejected before he defected

Four days before Robert Jenrick was kicked out of the Tories for planning to defect to Reform UK, he spoke “at length” with Kemi Badenoch on the phone about party strategy. The week before he had sat through a shadow cabinet awayday taking copious notes.While the Tory leader had been aware for some time of speculation over her shadow justice secretary’s future, she had no hard proof of his plans, so it was business as usual. That all changed just 24 hours after their one-to-one conversation.On Monday, senior figures in Badenoch’s office were sent screenshots of what one said was “irrefutably” Jenrick’s entire resignation speech from what sources claimed was a mole in his office, along with the accompanying media plan

Treachery and stupidity to the fore as Robert Jenrick defects to Reform | John Crace

One is too many and 1,000 never enough. Addiction is a tricky business. What starts as fun inevitably, insidiously, tears away the soul. And there are signs that Nigel Farage’s press conference habit is getting out of control. He started off at one a week

Robert Jenrick: from remainer to rightwinger with ruthless reputation

For a long time, Robert Jenrick’s transformation from a David Cameron-supporting remainer to an anti-immigration rightwinger did not convince many of his political peers – least of all Nigel Farage.Only last year, the Reform UK leader was describing him as a “fraud” and saying he was sceptical that Jenrick was genuine, dubbing him “Robert the Generic, Robert the Remainer and Robert the I Don’t Stand Particularly for Anything at all”.“There are people in politics who are there through conviction and there are people in politics who are there because they want to reach rank, position and all that comes with that,” he said at the time.“I’m really still not sure about Jenrick, to be honest with you, I’m really not sure.”Now, the verdicts of some of Jenrick’s Tory colleagues on his political behaviour are similarly damning and centre on his unbridled ambitions

Tory defectors: who has already joined Reform UK and who may follow?

With Robert Jenrick’s defection, the number of current or former parliamentarians to have joined Reform from the Conservatives has risen to 18. Some of the best known are likely to be prominent voices for Nigel Farage’s party in the run-up to the next election.There are others within the Conservative party thought to have considered their position in recent months. But Farage has claimed that the value of such additions to his ranks is dropping – and said he would accept no further defectors from the Tories after the May elections, arguing that by then his party’s strength would be so clear that they would have little to add.Here are some of the most prominent figures on both sides of that divide

‘The mask has slipped’: What have Jenrick and Farage said about each other in the past?

Like other Conservative recruits to Reform UK, Robert Jenrick’s defection has come with no shortage of lacerating past comments about Nigel Farage and his other new colleagues.When Nadhim Zahawi defected to Reform on Monday, Conservative headquarters were quick to unload the former chancellor’s previous comments about Farage on to social media.In the case of Jenrick, below is just some of the ammunition they have been drawing on once again.Today I took forward a bill to stop the two-tier sentencing rules that come into force in just 18 days. While Nigel Farage swanned off to Cheltenham to forget his troubles