It is day three of Conservative Party conference and the punchiest speech of the event has just been made. Robert Jenrick, the heat-seeking missile of the Tory front bench, has just delivered another howitzer aimed squarely at Britain’s judiciary. Brandishing a judge’s wig, he addressed the conference faithful with the vim and vigour that have seen him soar to the top of the ConservativeHome shadow cabinet league table. Jenrick’s twenty-minute address – the last before Kemi Badenoch’s big speech tomorrow – was a full throttle, studs-up attack on what he calls ‘activist’ judges. He took aim at the ‘dozens of judges’ he claims to have uncovered with ‘ties to open borders charities’, partisan social media posts and ‘who’ve spent their careers fighting to keep illegal migrants in this country.’ Channelling Geoffrey Howe’s cricketing metaphor, he claimed that ‘it is like finding out halfway through a football match that the referee is a season ticket holder for the other side.’
Questions of nationhood and migration have dominated the past year of British politics. So it was no surprise then that Jenrick used his speech to unveil the hard work his team has done this year. He pledged to not ‘just tinker with a broken system and reform immigration tribunals’ but ‘abolish them, once and for all.’
On his watch there would be ‘no more quangos’ like the Sentencing Council, he said – but rather, the reversal of the 2005 Constitutional Reform Act and the restoration of ‘the Office of the Lord Chancellor to its former glory.’
He vowed that ministers ‘will once again appoint the judges’ to ensure that ‘never again will this country and our people face the prospect of the two-tier justice.’ Quoting Michael Heseltine – a reference which will no doubt enrage Tarzan – he pledged to ‘fight, fight, fight Labour,’ with every waking hour. There then followed a peroration to Britain’s glories.
‘The best farmers, food and drink, beer, in the world: from Aberdeen Angus beef to Hawkstone Lager’, was one such stab at eulogy.
Along with the high politics, there was plenty of middle brow tub thumping too: Mr Bean, Blackadder and Big Brother star Emily Hewertson all got their hat tips. Referencing his opposite number’s infamous appearance on a TV programme, Jenrick joked that ‘I’m not sure Mastermind was the show for David (Lammy) – perhaps he could try Pointless.’ The – near-full – conference hall lapped it up.
It was a performance that will – to borrow from Dora Gaitskell – have all the right people crying. Already, David Lammy has rushed out a press release decrying Jenrick’s ‘democratic backsliding.’ ‘He threatens to trash the institutions and traditions that hold our country together,’ declared the new Lord Chancellor.
For Jenrick’s aides, who would cross the street to have the right fight, such bewailing will be read as a positive sign that they have cut through in a way that so many of his frontbench colleagues have manifestly failed to do. For some, today’s address will have echoes of Theresa May’s ‘citizens of nowhere’ speech; a sad indicator of the Tory party abandoning once sacred beliefs. Others will point to Margaret Thatcher’s distinction between the ‘rule of law’ versus the ‘rule of lawyers’; a welcome blast of Cromwellian common sense against an over mighty authority drunk on its own power.
One thing is for sure: Robert Jenrick has got the conference talking all about him, once again.
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