I can’t kid myself any more. The party hasn’t changed… and it won’t. The bulk of the party don’t get it. Don’t have the stomach for the radical change this country needs. In opposition, it’s easy to paper over these cracks, but the divisions – the delusions – are still there. And if we don’t get the next Government right, Britain will likely slip beyond the point of repair. Everything is on this. I cannot, in good conscience, stick with a party that’s failed so badly, that isn’t sorry and hasn’t changed. That I know in my heart won’t… can’t… deliver what’s needed. That’s why I resolved to leave.
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Samizdata quote of the day – who did Robert Jenrick throw under the bus?January 17th, 2026 |
 18 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – who did Robert Jenrick throw under the bus?Leave a Reply |
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It was a powerful attack.
I do not know if the account of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet is accurate – but if (if) it is, then the attack was not just powerful, it had a foundation.
Kemi Badenoch has laid out good policies (on government spending, immigration, the ECHR and so on) – arguably better (yes BETTER) than the policies that Nigel Farage has laid out – but Robert Jenrick claims that the Parliamentary Party would not support Kemi Badenoch in practice to actually DELIVER these policies – no more than they supported Liz Truss when the establishment sabotaged her government.
The one weakness in the speech of Robert Jenrick (and I did listen to it – from start to finish) was that he did not mention the institutional (institutional) barriers – the officials and “experts”.
As former Prime Minister Liz Truss (and others) have pointed out – in Britain it is unelected officials and “experts” who have the real power (the Bank of England and so on), and this is a horrible state-of-affairs.
Unlike in America, where the institutional structure is ossified, in the UK it is actually possible to deal with the institutional barriers that Paul mentions. But, because the barriers include the courts and the House of Lords, as well as the Blob, it is not possible to deal with the institutional barriers without waiting a year for the Parliament Act to tick over.
This seems to me not a bad thing. A Reform government can explain on Day 1 that it isn’t actually the government for the first year, and it can spent that time getting its ducks in a row legislatively and in terms of personnel. And starting on the process of cutting public spending – using the Money Bill trick. And resiling from the many treaties that need resiling from.
Meanwhile waiting a year while the House of Lords has hissy fits, and the courts order Ministers to drink caster oil will help persuade the persuadable that the new government is not a fascist dictatoship but a respectable rule of law bunch.
Did he bring out a cut onion from his pocket during his “off the cuff” speech ?
Spare me the sanctimonious twaddle, Bobby.
You – as a professional politico – are part & parcel of the problem this country faces.
The reality of “Opportunistic chancer is given the bum’s rush” probably isn’t the truth Generic Bobby wants on his tombstone.
I’d imagine that defanging the Tories of a potential leader and creating chaos to boot was too much of a temptation to miss for Nigel.
There are plenty of warning signs about the Farage ego project, but the easily dislikeable Jenrick is not wrong in his analysis. I rather like Kemi, but she has an impossible task. How can anyone trust the ‘(Not at all) Conservative (dedicated to eroding freedoms, locking households up, encouraging the dregs of humanity to come here and live at our expense, force-injecting people with poison and trash the economy while we’re having a) Party, not least while the number of true Conservatives in the Party in the Commons is probably down to single figures.
At least Jenrick has energy, and seems to have embraced his latest set of beliefs with a convert’s zeal. I’m much more concerned about Zadawi, who is a shady pro-immigration opportunist.
For all the attempts by the Telegraph, Rees-Mogg and Hannan to foster the idea of a Tory/Reform alliance, on the spurious grounds that the Tories are a Right wing party, Farage’s only viable strategy is the destroy the Tories, thus becoming the only alternative to some sort of godawful left alliance. Outside Ulster, every other Party, Green, Labour, LibDems, SNP or Plaid are some shade of Left.
Reform understands that.
I know when politicians slag each other off it’s often as genuine as the storylines in professional wrestling but even so this Jenrick defection is a bit on the nose given that only a couple of months ago Jenrick said Farage couldn’t run a five a side team and Farage called Jenrick a complete fraud (Farage was right the first time).
I suppose getting Tories to defect to Reform is one way of destroying the Tory Party, but it’s also a good way of Reform just becoming another Tory Party.
That’s a good point: Reform has taken in the likes of Nadine Dorries (author of the Online Safety Bill and a fool); Zahawi (dodgy finances), and now Jenrick (who not that long ago was a Cameron supporter and who more recently damned Farage in salty language.)
Farage may not want to be known as running a refuge for knaves, fools, etc, but he’s not got first-raters joining the ranks. It’s not very edifying.
My worry is that we are no nearer getting an opposition that sets a small-government alternative to the Labour government. A rainbow coalition of the absurd is the likely outcome at the next GE.
Don’t disagree but I don’t recall there being any actual first raters in the Tory party anymore. The last government was so bad it discredited all of them. Revelations since, such as how Ben Wallace and co quietly smuggled in tens of thousands of Afghans and reminders that Liz Truss championed the cause of the Egyptian guy who turned out was an anti-white lunatic, have just kicked the boot in further.
The post asks a question – and the person who, specifically – by name, that Robert Jenrick attacked in the speech was Mel Stride – the Shadow Chancellor.
Robert Jenrick claimed that Mel Stride had been opposed to any real control of government spending under the previous Conservative Party government (which, partly due to Covid, spent more money than any previous British government – by a large margin), and had NOT changed his opinions.
It will be interesting to see if Mr Stride denies the charges that Mr Jenrick has made.
Meanwhile, at the grass roots level, the farce continues – today in a Town Council by election campaign in Burton Latimer (a place a few miles from me) Conservatives and Reform Party members who have known each other for a very long time, and agree on everything politically, carefully did not speak to each other – even when we were in the same pub at lunch time.
This is absurd – we can not carry on like this up-and-down England.
Edmund Burke defined a political party as a group of people united by common political ideas (policies) – there is no difference between Conservative Party members, up and down England – in the towns and villages, and Reform Party members – we know each other, we have all our lives.
We can not keep pretending there is some sort of political dispute – when, on policy, there really is none.
Oh we can display differences on this or that – but in terms of basic beliefs, there is no difference. Not at the grass roots level.
@Paul Marks
But there is apparently a large difference between the wet half of the Conservative MPs and the Conservative Party members. I don’t think that Kemi Badenoch can hold things together once the run up to the next General Election starts in earnest. Ejecting Jenrick to buy stability at the cost of authenticity perhaps?
Paul Marks – “Edmund Burke defined a political party as a group of people united by common political ideas (policies)”
But this is the point, Paul. I was perhaps a touch austere here a few days ago describing the conversations as theoretical. I am not from Northamptonshire. I grew up a few miles across the border in Warwickshire but we could meet on that border – West Haddon is about halfway – and draw up a policy plan. You and I would agree on 90% of evreything we talked about in the first couple of hours. There is precious little dispute between us about policy, as you say.
But agreeing on policy is just vanity at this stage. The Conservative party hierarchy that reaches Westminster and HQ is not prepared to implement those policies, Sir. They will lie and pretend but they will not do it. Your view is that the unelected will obstruct them. My view is they lack the courage to fight the battle.
Boris just screwed up a majority of 80! And he did nothing but Boris, bless, isn’t a politician. He doesn’t know even now that it was all a show. Farage is the only man I can see who may have the steel in him to burn it all down. Repeal it all. Cross it all out and (will likely have to) leave the next guy to start over.
And so the theory of policy will have to wait until the blood and gore of power yields an opening. This means that our No.1 priority is to present a party at a General Election with a sufficient majority to put a bit of stick about. That points at a once-in-a-lifetime chance to wreck the consensus of decline and vote for Reform.
Paul Marks: “We can not keep pretending there is some sort of political dispute – when, on policy, there really is none”
That strongly suggests that the distinction is on the matter of loyalty to an organisation, not a political dispute.
As a voter, and not (so far) a member of either, I will support whichever party seems to me most likely to implement (and not just talk about) the policies I want, per Burke’s definition. As I think you were pointing out, the party members need to take that on board and downgrade tribal loyalty by comparison.
What really frightens me though is the thought that enough political careerists will defect to Reform that it becomes loaded down with them, unable to take any action that might provoke a backlash or upset the Civil Service; just like the Parliamentary Conservative Party.
It all comes down to money. The government has a great many mouths to feed and as the economy falters it naturally tries to push up taxes to maintain its own income at the expense of the people. If you try to stop the government looting its own nation to feed its supporters you will end up with a great many angry, broke people and those people have votes, and they won’t be shy about taking to the streets either.
It may very well be that large scale income redistribution is the only thing preventing complete collapse.
The pros and cons of Reform accepting Tory defectors seem to me to be roughly :
PROs
1. a little bit of experience in government is probably better than none. Trump 2 for example has a much better chance of changing things than Trump 1, since though he will never admit it, he was naive first time round
2. there’s probably a tipping point where enough defections help persuade the broadly right wing bit of the electorate that a Tory vote is, in most constituencies, a wasted vote. Reform 30% Tories 15% produces a much better score than Reform 25% Tories 20%
CONs
1. The Tories have, and have had for decades, a very bad smell in a lot of places where Reform is challenging Labour. Reform does not want to be thought of as a reincarnation of the Conservative Party.
2. If Reform were to win a majority, but with a substantial number of ex-Tory backsliders providing the critical votes, they will backslide.
Also, the last Tory government created such a very bad smell almost everywhere. The more veterans of that benighted government that are allowed into Reform, the more the smell of that government sticks to Reform. Makes it harder for Reform to claim they are a fresh start.
Discovered Joys, Barbarus, Mongoose.
What is needed is to break the power of the officials and “experts”.
Past ministers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg were NOT “wet Tories” – but they had no power.
It is the same at local government level – for example Reform came into power in various County Councils and Unitary Authorities pledged to cut Council Tax and found they had to increase it by 4.9%.
I told them that in advance – and I did not know the exact level the Council Tax would go up by due to some “Mystic Paul” ESP power – I know the system of government.
All political parties, for obvious reasons, do not want to admit that, if elected, they will have-no-power.
Have no power because of the basic structure of governance (including international governance) that has evolved over a very long period of time.
The system of governance needs to be smashed.
And I used the word “smashed” deliberately.
But that is a very radical case to make to the public.
I do not believe it is loyalty to an organization – no one, other than the people who are employed by it, cares much about Central Office down in London – I certainly have no reason to love Central Office, after all thye kicked me out of the party for a year (a party I had been an active member of for longer than most people in Central Office have been alive) for saying naughty things about their beloved Mayor Khan.
It is, for most Conservatives in Britain, loyalty to family and friends at a local level – remember many of the local networks (religious and secular) that used to connect people, no longer exist – so people are isolated (atomized) and have few contacts with other people at social events and so on.
As a man pointed out to me yesterday – in the American political party structure (which I have mocked in the past – perhaps showing my own foolishness) Mr Farage would not have had to create a new political party – he would have (like President Trump) “registered as” a Republican (a Conservative) – and other people who had “registered as” Republicans would have voted for him as the candidate for head of government.
No painful change of parties, no loss of family and friends (although some are still lost in the American system – the “never Trump” ex Republicans), just a change of management.