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The Conservative Party is in a better place today than it was yesterday because it no longer includes Robert Jenrick, who has been sacked as Shadow Justice Secretary and his membership suspended. A man whose pronouncements on race and skin color would have caused every politician from Edward Heath to Rishi Sunak to oust him from the Conservative front bench is no longer on it. This is progress for those who hope for a return to the moderate, centre-right type of Tory party that can survive and thrive.
But the circumstances of his dismissal are not because party leader Kemi Badenoch has paid late attention to the content of Jenrick’s character. Instead, she says, she was presented with “irrefutable” evidence that he was plotting to thwart Nigel Farage’s reforms, and in a way to cause maximum damage to the Conservatives.
By Badenoch’s own account, this is a “You’re leaving me, I’m leaving you” type of dismissal. This kind of thing never makes a good impression on the person saying it, but on this occasion it protects a little Conservative dignity by depriving Farage of a moment of Westminster theatre. The best time to remove Jenrick from the Conservative Party was the autumn of last year. But the second best time is now, and this week may yet represent the moment in which the Conservatives finally realized the nature of the threat from their rivals.
Farage has never made a secret of his desire to destroy the Tory party. Yet many Conservatives have a sentimental view of Reform as a long-lost family member, whose politicians should be talked about as tragically lost children rather than as opponents who stand against or talk down the Conservative Party’s many proud achievements, from free trade to Britain’s support for Ukraine.
When the Tory machine stirs itself up to attack reform, it does so in the tone of a wounded lover. Thus the reaction among Badenoch’s colleagues to Jenrick’s suspected defection (and indeed Nadhim Zahawi’s actual defection earlier this week) has been one of hurt betrayal, rather than an argument for why a strong Conservative Party is better for Britain than reform.
Badenoch now has that opportunity. His improved performance in PMQs and Labour’s continued decline in opinion polls have left him internally stronger than before. She can now chart a path for her party that is distinct and separate from both Reform and the Labor government. She could recapture ground on which the Tory Party has traditionally contested and won elections.
Nevertheless, Jenrick’s exit from the Conservative family is as much a threat as an opportunity. Many of his parliamentary colleagues are not naturally “Badenochites”, but clung to his leadership out of fear that Jenrick was his inevitable successor. Without that fear, Badenoch must now prove he has a plan for the Tory party to become something more than a caustic echo of reform.
stephen.bush@ft.com
