For a long time, Robert Jenrick’s transformation from a David Cameron-supporting remainer to an anti-immigration rightwinger did not convince many of his political peers – least of all Nigel Farage.
Only last year, the Reform UK leader was describing him as a “fraud” and saying he was sceptical that Jenrick was genuine, branding him “Robert the Generic, Robert the Remainer and Robert the I Don’t Stand Particularly for Anything at all”.
“There are people in politics who are there through conviction and there are people in politics who are there because they want to reach rank, position and all that comes with that,” he said at the time.
“I’m really still not sure about Jenrick, to be honest with you, I’m really not sure.”
Now, the verdicts of some of Jenrick’s Tory colleagues on his political behaviour are similarly damning and centre around his unbridled ambitions.
One said Jenrick “does not have a truly rightwing bone in his body” but merely goes whichever way the political wind is blowing to serve his own career.
Matthew Parris, the former Tory MP and current newspaper columnist, on Thursday declared: “If you were to remove ambition from the core of Robert Jenrick, he would collapse like a boneless chicken.”
But Jenrick, 44, privately insists that his political journey is a serious one, caused by radicalisation while he was a Home Office minister.
He may have started off backing the remain campaign, but by the time he was a minister in Suella Braverman’s department he became frustrated by the party’s failure to take action to meet its promises on bringing down migration levels.
It was then that he ordered children’s murals depicting Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters at an asylum centre to be painted over to make the building less welcoming.
During this time, he also began to build a reputation for ruthlessness, with advisers who were prepared to practise political dark arts behind the scenes in service of his aims.
Once considered a friend of Rishi Sunak, his resignation as immigration minister in late 2023, saying the Rwanda scheme to deport illegal migrants “does not go far enough”, was a bitter blow for the then prime minister.
And in the months after that, his allies were thought to behind what was known in Westminster as a “grid of shit” – a series of interventions designed to destabilise Sunak.
After Sunak lost the 2024 election, Jenrick was quickly a frontrunner for the leadership, undergoing a makeover and weight loss, and greatly expanding his social media presence with “walk and talk” videos addressing voters directly.
But the lack of loyalty towards Sunak and suspicions about his motives appeared to dampen his chances with the Tory membership – who overwhelmingly opted for his rival Kemi Badenoch.
Afterwards, his wife, the lawyer Michal Berkner, was caught on camera rolling her eyes during lengthy clapping for the victorious Badenoch.
While Badenoch appeared to think Jenrick was less dangerous inside her shadow cabinet than outside it, she gave him a mid-ranking role as shadow justice secretary.
Publicly loyal, he frequently strayed beyond his brief and burnished his future leadership credentials by making viral videos on issues such as tool theft and public transport fare dodging.
He was widely criticised for saying that any protester who shouts “Allahu Akbar” should be arrested – and last year over comments he made complaining that that he “didn’t see another white face” in a part of Birmingham.
He also departed from the party line by flirting with the idea of closer ties with Reform UK, privately saying he believed himself to be further to the right on many issues than Farage himself. And at one point, Conservative colleagues started calling him “Nigel’s chancellor”, despite his insistence that he was not defecting.
His former Tory colleagues also have words of warning to Farage about both Jenrick’s ambitions to be top dog and brushes with scandal. He was previously sacked as housing secretary by Boris Johnson not long after the government had to admit his decision to grant planning consent to the Tory donor Richard Desmond was unlawful.
One former Tory adviser from the right of the party said Farage would not be bothered by Jenrick’s political baggage as he had shown himself willing to accept such a long string of former Conservative MPs with mixed records.
“Farage is as desperate for defections as a junkie for his fix (hence why he’ll take people like Jake, Nadine and Nadhim), so this will one be sucked up willingly too,” he said.
Farage himself appeared to rewrite history in relation to his previous criticism of Jenrick, saying the moment he knew the man could be trusted was his resignation from Sunak’s cabinet in 2024. “There is no question that Jenrick and I are on exactly the same page today, if not always in the past,” he said, claiming that members were prepared to forgive and forget Tories who have apologised.
Speaking alongside him, Jenrick took 23 minutes of his speech before mentioning Farage or Reform, after taking aim at the incompetence of many of his former Tory colleagues. But he belatedly struck a note of newfound loyalty, saying he had put aside his personal ambition to be Tory leader and wanted Farage to be prime minister: “I am convinced Nigel and Reform will deliver the real change we need.”
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