Robert Jenrick has joined Reform UK after being sacked as Conservative shadow justice secretary, the most high-profile defection yet from the Tories to Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party.
The defection came just hours after Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch pre-emptively removed Jenrick from her shadow cabinet, saying she had “clear, irrefutable evidence” that he was plotting to join Reform.
Jenrick appeared alongside Farage at a press conference on Thursday afternoon, where he declared his loyalty to the reform leader after claiming that the Conservatives and Labor have “broken” Britain and cannot fix it.
Jenrick said, “I want Nigel to be our Prime Minister after the next general election.” “That’s the only way we’ll save our country.”
Jenrick’s defection comes as the Tories fight Reform’s bid to replace them as the main right-wing party in British politics.
Farage, who has lured many Conservatives to his Eurosceptic, anti-immigration party in recent months, insisted he had been talking to Jenrick for some time, but there had been no agreement before Thursday.
Farage said, “The Conservative leadership has got down to business on this. I just want to say ‘thank you’ to Kemi Badenoch… You have handed me the most popular personality I have ever seen.”
Badenoch removed the Tory whip from Jenrick on Thursday morning and suspended him from the party. He was seen as a potential challenger to Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservative Party as he sought to defeat him to the top post in 2024.
Jenrick, a right-winger who served in government under four Tory prime ministers between 2018 and 2023, said: “The two main parties are rotten. They are no longer fit for purpose…
“After the last election, I hoped, like others, that the Conservative Party would change, would consider with humility our mistakes, that it would repent. I said this after the election… That has not happened.”
He said: “I respect Kemmy, but I don’t trust the Conservative Party on immigration.”
Jenrick’s departure from the party comes days after former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi joined Reform, which is leading in opinion polls.
Other Conservatives to join Farage’s party in recent months include former ministers Nadine Dorries and Maria Caulfield, as well as MP Danny Kruger and Dame Andrea Jenkins, the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire.
Farage said there would be a defection from Labor to Reform next week, but declined to say whether it would be a councillor, MP or other individual.
Badenoch had previously announced that she was sacking Jenrick because she accused him of “secretly plotting to cause as much damage as possible to his shadow cabinet colleagues and the wider Conservative Party”.
Tory officials said Badenoch’s team had received draft material setting out Jenrick’s reasoning for leaving which provided “proof” that he was planning to defect to the Reform Party.
Conservative chief whip Rebecca Harris confronted Jenrick in a phone call on Thursday morning and he denied any plans to leave the party before hanging up the phone, according to a Tory aide.
A senior Conservative official said the party’s top ranks broadly supported the move to fire Badenoch. “He acted decisively and got the boil under control before it became a serious problem,” the officer said.
Badenoch later said she was replacing Jenrick as Shadow Justice Secretary with Nick Timothy, an adviser to former Prime Minister Baroness Theresa May.
Jenrick ran for the Conservative leadership in November 2024 but lost to Badenoch 56 percent to 44 percent.
Early last year, he was consistently named the most popular shadow cabinet member in polls of grassroots Tories by the Conservative Home website, although he was overtaken by Badenoch and shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride in December.
In December, Jenrick denied to the Financial Times a rumor that he was talking to Farage or that he might ever consider joining Reform. “I’m a conservative…that’s my home,” he said.
In protest, Jenrick built a public profile with skillful use of social media to highlight his increasingly right-wing opinions, such as opposing the Labor government’s intense drive to develop green energy, insisting on cuts to welfare spending, and his desire for a period of “negative immigration”.
He was widely seen in Westminster as having ambitions to replace Badenoch as Tory leader, with many expecting him to face a potential challenge following elections for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Senedd and English councils in May.
But Badenoch’s position with its MPs has strengthened in recent months, even as polls continue to show the Conservatives favoring reform at 18 per cent versus 29 per cent.
Tory Party donors had made clear they did not want to see another leadership challenge after the previous Conservative government, which ran through five different prime ministers, earning a reputation for infighting and chaos.
