Robert Jenrick appears on course to become leader of the Conservative party within a year of resigning from ministerial office in Rishi Sunak’s administration. That is a telling indicator of how far the Conservative regimes of the last parliament had strayed from the gut instincts of the Tory tribe.
Jenrick has been focused on victory for many months
The Newark MP is far from home and hosed in the contest and may yet be defeated by the force of Kemi Badenoch’s political personality, or the sheer ‘nice guy’ campaigning warmth of James Cleverly.
But the bookies now make him clear favourite to become Leader of the Opposition on 2 November after he topped the first round of the leadership contest. For Jenrick to be comfortably ahead of Kemi Badenoch, with 28 votes to her 22, represents a remarkable turnaround in their respective political fortunes.
Where she was the rising star in the contest of summer 2022, Jenrick is the candidate with momentum this time round, looking as hungry as she was two years ago. In early April, he was 12-1 fourth favourite to be next party leader. Now, he’s just 5-4 with most bookmakers.
Reports of Badenoch’s campaign launch – compered by Francis Maude and with trendy refreshments on offer to hacks – caused an awkward memory to be stirred in those of us who have been around for a while. Michael Portillo’s leadership launch in 2001 had the very same combination. Pain Au Chocolat was the stand-out catering offer from the ante-post favourite that day as Maude led a phalanx of careerist centrist Tories into Portillo’s corner. According to the Daily Telegraph’s Tim Stanley, this time round an ‘apple, spinach and ginger smoothie’ was on offer at Kemi’s coalescence with the beautiful and the damned.
Jenrick, by contrast, has been serving up the roast beef of olde England for months. This one-time Tory centrist exhibits the zeal of the convert on mass migration scepticism. With his friend Neil O’Brien – a recruit from the Badenoch campaign of 2022 – he has set about dismantling the flabby case for continued gargantuan immigration volumes.
For those of us who believe that it was Tory failures and betrayals on both legal and illegal immigration that was the prime cause of the party losing so many millions of votes between 2019 and 2024, it has been bittersweet to see a significant player from inside the party establishment finally get the message.
But better late than never. While Badenoch has steadfastly refused to adopt a policy of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, or committing to a hard cap on legal migration volumes, Jenrick has gone for both. While she has been ambushed by a video clip from 2018 of her apparently enthusing about further liberalisation of immigration policy, he has openly admitted to being radicalised by reality while immigration minister.
Kemi will have to deliver the speech of her life to stop Jenrick now
Other tell-tale signs of someone preparing for a tilt at the top – an Ozempic gold medal for weight loss and a new tough-guy haircut – have accompanied his repositioning. Did he resign from Sunak’s team because Cleverly was parachuted in over his head to replace Suella Braverman as Home Secretary? In part, yes. That certainly must have stung, considering his former status alongside Sunak and Oliver Dowden as one of a tight-knit group of three rising Tory musketeers.
But resign he did, giving himself some rare credibility in the eyes of the migration-sceptic masses that any successful Tory leader must seek to woo back into the blue corner.
According to the latest Conservative Home members’ survey, Badenoch remains the darling of the party grassroots. But is there a viewpoint time lag in operation here that Jenrick might be on track to overturn? And might he and Cleverly each be building enough parliamentary support to prevent her going before the members anyway?
Any sense of complacency in Team Badenoch will have been punctured by Wednesday’s under-shooting. Yet Jenrick has been focused on victory for many months and has built himself a formidable array of advantages.
It may all come down to which of them can best connect with the hall at the Conservative party conference. He will be displaying his particular public performance facility – an ability to speak fluently without notes for an extended period. That did the trick for David Cameron in 2005. She will have to deliver the speech of her life to stop him now.
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