The defection of Robert Jenrick is different. Nadim Zahawi’s decision to join the Reform bandwagon last week was significant, of course, though not necessarily for the reasons Nigel Farage hopes. Danny Kruger’s defection last year was more important still, bringing an intellectual energy to Britain’s radical right that it had previously lacked. But the Jenrick decampment on Thursday signals something far more profound about the future of British politics. Jenrick doesn’t just bring himself; he brings Jenrickism – an ideological movement which may yet transform Reform and potentially Britain.
The most common argument about Jenrick is that he is nothing but a sheep dressed in wolf’s clothing, a fraud pretending to be more right-wing than he actually is. The real Jenrick, according to this argument, is a boring, centrist Cameroon who is so power obsessed he will say and do anything for a shot at being prime minister. Jenrick is certainly an ambitious man with an eye on history. But while it is true that his traverse from the soft centre of the Tory family towards its radical edge – and beyond – has been startling, the most interesting thing about Jenrick is not that he once repeated Cameroon shibboleths for advancement, but that he potentially brings something to Reform that it previously lacked: a project.
Nigel Farage, much like Donald Trump, is so formidable as a politician because he is guided less by ideology than instinctive reactionary populism. Yet, it is hard to draw from this a coherent plan to transform the British state, because there isn’t one. There is no book Farage can slam on a table in Cabinet and declare “this is what we believe”. Jenrick, though, sits at the apex of the new counter-revolutionary conservative movement which has set its sights on destroying the “Blairite state” it blames for everything that has gone wrong in the past 30 years. As such, Jenrick may yet be to Farage, what JD Vance is to Trump.
“It’s worse than you think,” Tony Blair used to say to Labour colleagues who desperately wanted him to reassure them he was less right-wing than he presented himself in public: “I actually believe it.” I think something similar of Jenrick. In private Jenrick is certainly quieter and more reserved than he is in public, but on questions of migration, multiculturalism, Islam, crime and Britain’s economic decline his quiet intensity is impossible to miss. Perhaps even more significantly for British politics, he also brings a degree of administrative zeal which has so far been lacking from Farage’s party.
Jenrick does not simply believe immigration was too high, but that the “Boriswave” of new arrivals into the country since 2019 amounts to a national scandal, which has become an emergency. He does not believe the “wave” should be stopped – he believes it must be reversed or the country will not recover. He also believes the small boats issue will only be tackled by force. According to those close to Jenrick, he fears the real test for the next government could come in tragedy, should a woman or child die at sea after being turned back trying to reach Britain, sparking outrage at home and abroad. This, he believes, will be the government’s “Thatcher moment” when only the assertion of government authority will suffice, much as – in his view – the Tory heroine saw off the hunger strikers, miners and Argentines.
Connecting all of this is Jenrick’s central analysis, set out in the speech he gave confirming his defection. He believes that the principal dividing line in British politics today is between those who believe that the political and economic consensus of the last 30 years can be saved, and those who believe it is not only dead, but is in fact the cause of Britain’s decline and must be smashed by force. Jenrick is not alone in this analysis but he is the most prominent and powerful figure in this wider movement, sitting atop a group of prominent MPs and academics from Danny Kruger to James Orr, David Starkey and even a few remaining Conservative MPs.
There is much to be sceptical about in this emerging conservative analysis, of course. Much like Thatcher, who sought to resurrect the British market town capitalism of her youth but only succeeded in bringing the world’s capital to Britain, Reform’s restorationist project may prove itself little more than a doomed attempt to resuscitate a lost free-market Atlanticism already suffocated by Donald Trump. Yet, doomed or not, Nigel Farage has found an ideological foil — one who, like JD Vance, has his eye on something more than mere instinctive populism.
[Further reading: Is there a strategy behind Kemi’s Jenrick purge?]
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Subscribe here to commentI do think it’s a general and long term failure of political journalism to ascribe both meaning and intellect to politicians where none exists. When you see an opportunistic chancer hitch their wagon to whichever new movement rides into town, perhaps better not to attempt to construct an intellectual project, but see it for what it is. There’s no evidence Jenrick has a political philosophy aside from a few cheap soundbites. Thatcher at least drew on some (misguided) theorists. Reform swerves wildly from big state interventionism to free market neo-liberalism. It’s a protest project. The fact that Danny Kruger is considered an intellectual heavyweight sets the bar here. Jenrick is highly ambitious without ability to match. Let’s stop sticking “isms” on things made of hot air.