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The “arsonists” who tanked the reputation of the Conservatives are still in charge of the party, Robert Jenrick has said as he and the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, traded blows a day after his dramatic defection to Reform UK.
Giving his first interview since his announcement on Thursday, the former shadow justice secretary said the Conservatives had not changed since the election, while defending himself against allegations of lying from his former party leader.
“I came to the conclusion over the course of the last year or so that … the party hadn’t changed, that the people who’d made those mistakes were still sat around the shadow cabinet table, the arsonists were still in control of the party, and that this was not a party that was capable of even understanding what it had got wrong, let alone fixing it,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Friday.
Jenrick insisted “I could not have been franker” over his intentions, despite telling the Conservative chief whip on Thursday he would never defect – an act that Badenoch said showed he “tells a lot of lies”.
In her own set of broadcast interviews hours earlier, Badenoch said: “You can’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. This is a man who was asked yesterday morning, ‘Are you going to defect?’ And he said ‘never’ to the chief whip.”
She added: “People from Reform and other Conservative party members have been bringing stuff to me about the actions he had been doing to undermine the party, and I kept giving him a chance. So I’m just glad that Nigel Farage is doing my spring cleaning for me. He’s taking away my problems.”
The public row between the two former Tory leadership rivals comes as both parties digest the news of Reform’s most significant defection yet.
Jenrick’s move has been largely welcomed among Reform MPs and members, but also by some Conservatives who say it has strengthened Badenoch’s position in her own party.
Michael Gove, the peer and former Tory cabinet minister, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “After the defection of Nadhim Zahawi earlier this week, there’s a risk that, rather than seeming like a fresh force determined to clear up politics, [Reform] look rather more like Slytherin house.”
Speaking to Sky News, Nick Timothy, who has been given Jenrick’s job as shadow justice secretary, said voters would not welcome his former colleague’s move.
“The country is absolutely sick of the backbiting, the backstabbing and, frankly, the lack of seriousness with which lots of politicians have taken the very serious and significant challenges that the country faces,” he said.
Jenrick has urged other rightwingers to follow his example, writing in the Telegraph on Friday: “If you’re not already onboard, join the movement. The future of the country is on the line.”
He told Kuenssberg, however, that he did not know of any other imminent high-profile defections.
Labour, meanwhile, has insisted it is unconcerned by Farage’s comments about an incoming Labour defector next week.
Rachel Reeves brushed off such suggestions on Friday. The chancellor told ITV Tyne Tees: “Nigel Farage says a lot of things and I think we should all take those with a pinch of salt.”
One Labour source said they did not believe the defector would be a senior politician. They said: “Has Farage ever trailed a decent defector in advance?”
