Kemi vs Robert: who would be the best Tory leader?

Robert Jenrick

It’s a testimony to the sheer unpopularity of Keir Starmer’s government that only three months after voters gave the Conservatives their biggest electoral kicking in two centuries, Labour has already lost its polling lead. Indeed, it has achieved this so quickly that its opponents still don’t even have a leader.

But as much as Labour has failed to impress, its dire poll numbers reflect a wider trend across the western world, where political leaders are now roundly hated almost everywhere. This suggests something more profound is going on.

If politicians are disliked, it’s in part because western countries are so badly governed, although Britain seems especially so. Our cities are overcome with squalor; crime is higher than it needs to be; housing is in crisis; public services are in a dismal state; energy costs are too high and we are at the mercy of a planning system that immiserates us. It is evident across the West that the status quo is not working, and we are at a 1970s-style moment of crisis for the consensus.

The biggest of these problems is immigration. The current system is not making us richer or safer, and not only are current migration numbers deeply unpopular, they also erode the legitimacy of democracy, which depends on the idea of a people with a shared sense of identity and history.

The Conservatives have, in every election manifesto, promised to reduce numbers, and the most recent version of the Tory regime lost the faith of voters with a cynical immigration policy of ‘human quantitative easing’. To win back that trust, they will need a fresh start with a leader plausibly distant from past mistakes – and the only person who can do that is Robert Jenrick.