From the magazine Katy Balls

Robert Jenrick is the talk of the Tory party

Katy Balls Katy Balls
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EXPLORE THE ISSUE 05 April 2025
issue 05 April 2025

In Westminster, politics is often a zero-sum game. There is a winner and a loser. But this week, two politicians from opposing sides found themselves being praised for the same thing: the Sentencing Council climbdown. After a long standoff with the government, the independent body stalled plans to bring in new rules on sentencing criminals from ethnic minorities, which were widely criticised as ‘two-tier justice’.

The plans were first revealed by Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, after he spotted advice given to magistrates and judges which would have meant certain minorities could receive preferential treatment on sentencing compared to white men. Jenrick went on the attack, warning that the rules would ‘discriminate against white people, against men, against Christians’ and that the justice system would become ‘infected by identity politics’.

This was news to his counterpart, Shabana Mahmood, the Lord Chancellor. ‘She was asleep at the wheel,’ argues a Jenrick ally. Yet her response was not typical of Labour. Rather than defend the independent body’s decision, she went on the offensive, informing the council chairman that the ‘appearance of differential treatment before the law is particularly corrosive’. Since then, both Jenrick and Mahmood have been on separate missions to stop the rules from coming into force.

For some time now, the Ministry of Justice has rivalled the Home Office as a graveyard for aspiring politicians. There have been 12 justice secretaries since 2010 and, further down the chain, the turnover of prisons ministers became so frequent that it was a running joke in the last government.

The fact that the Justice Secretary and her shadow have become the talk of their parties shows that British politics is heading in a new direction. The Sentencing Council row comes down to the question of who governs Britain. The public’s attitude to power and accountability is changing – deference to arms-length bodies is far from guaranteed. And the British attitude to race is also changing. Back in 2016, David Cameron asked David Lammy to lead a government review on apparent inequality in the criminal justice process. Now both Labour and Tory politicians talk about inequality in the other direction. ‘Shabana is a second-generation migrant, but she knows more about Magna Carta than most in the Labour party,’ says a colleague. ‘She is making sure her party signals to the country that brown people won’t be treated differently – in either direction.’

Not everyone in government agreed. Mahmood faced internal resistance from colleagues who, according to one Labour MP, represent the ‘woke left’. But she was also opposed from the centre. ‘There were a few figures in government asking whether we needed to have this fight,’ says one Labour source. ‘They asked if it would be such a big deal if the guidelines went ahead. But that misses the point.’

Kemi Badenoch’s allies insist she is delighted at the positive attention Robert Jenrick is getting

Mahmood’s conception of the rule of law contrasts to that of the Attorney-General, Richard Hermer, a former human rights barrister. While there are those in government who view this debate as a distraction and prefer to talk about the economy and wages, Mahmood saw the row as a political problem that needed to be dealt with quickly. Staying silent would have given Reform or the Tories an open goal.

She first tried writing to the council to ask it to change course. When that didn’t work, she moved to emergency legislation, pushing through a bill that would usually require weeks and months of consultancy.

However, Mahmood still has to face the bigger challenges. The second part of the sentencing review is due this spring, and it seems likely that the aim is to dole out fewer custodial sentences, to cut prison overcrowding. Ministers hope to argue that these changes are not just about necessity: justice needs to be reformed so that it encourages and rewards responsible behaviour. For instance, prisoners who make their beds every day can get out earlier; offenders who avoid the pub while wearing a tag will have it removed sooner. Yet ministers are aware this will be a hard case to make to the public – and the spending review in June could make it worse. If Mahmood can’t avoid cuts to her department (one source describes them as ‘shockingly grim’), the obvious way to save is on the prison-building programme, which won’t help fend off accusations about Labour being soft on crime.

‘The government’s approach to planning has really changed.’

On the Tory benches, there is no debate about whether their colleague has come out on top. When the news of the Sentencing Council’s humiliation broke on Monday night, Tories were tripping over themselves to praise Jenrick on Twitter. Kemi Badenoch’s allies insist she is delighted at the positive attention he is getting.

Yet it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Jenrick has a team of men – from his long time spad Tom Milford to a trainee at a magic circle law firm to a videographer who used to work for Boris Johnson – working on his digital operation to help him land points. His social media strategy is led by Dov Forman, the 21-year-old great-grandson of the Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert. He spent lockdown in his bedroom turning his conversations with her into an online phenomenon, gaining two million followers on TikTok. His mantra for Jenrick is ‘Speed is king’: the Tories need to beat Reform and Labour by being the first to comment on issues. Forman is studying at UCL when he isn’t working for Jenrick.

‘In opposition you just have to work so much harder,’ says one of the team. ‘So we’ve had to get creative.’ Jenrick comes up with most of the ideas himself. ‘He has always worked harder than everyone else – it’s what people don’t realise,’ says a long-time supporter.

That’s paying off. Jenrick joined TikTok two months ago and has already racked up a million views on his videos. His Facebook views have risen to nearly ten million. The Sentencing Council row is also the first time right-wing politicians have used lawfare to their advantage. Jenrick took legal advice and wrote to the council; ‘We’ll never know quite why they folded,’ says a supporter.

Whether it was Mahmood or Jenrick wot won it, both have a story to tell their party – if they can avoid the pitfalls that stopped the justice secretaries who came before.

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