New shadow justice secretary apologises after Jenrick’s Reform defection
Hello and welcome to the UK politics live blog with me, Tom Ambrose.
This morning we start with follow-up and reaction to Robert Jenrick’s dramatic sacking from the Tories and subsequent – if not depressingly unsurprising – defection to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
The shadow justice secretary was Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s leadership rival and had been the bookies favourite to replace her after she failed to make any sort of impact on the polls.
Jenrick was sacked from the shadow cabinet and suspended from the Conservative party after Badenoch said she was presented with “irrefutable evidence” that he was planning to defect.
And so he did just hours later, wheeled out as Farage’s latest recruit to Reform, in what is fast becoming the political equivalent of Trigger’s broom, stacked with the former Tories they say broke Britain.
It comes as Nick Timothy said he was “sorry” for how the Conservatives “handled certain things in those last few years” in power.
The new shadow justice secretary told BBC Breakfast it was clear the country had been “let down by some of the things that happened”.
Asked whether he was sorry, Timothy said:
I’ve said as a Conservative I’m sorry for the way the party has handled certain things in those last few years and I’ve been very open about that since I was elected for the first time 18 months ago.
The Conservative party will not move on and not persuade people to vote for us in the future in the numbers that we need unless we do look them in the eye and say we understand why we lost that election.
Timothy added that Jenrick was “a friend of mine” but that the public were sick of “the backbiting and the backstabbing” in politics.
He said:
Yeah, Rob’s been a friend of mine for some time. It’s obviously disappointing that he’s decided to move on, but the thing is, what we learned yesterday is the clear contrast between the Conservatives led by Kemi Badenoch and the other parties and what they offer Britain today.
The public are sick of the backbiting and the backstabbing and the lack of seriousness in our political parties when the challenges that the country faces are so serious, Kemi was given irrefutable evidence of what was about to happen, and she acted very decisively.
Badenoch, meanwhile, is expected to speak to the media later this morning. Stay tuned for that when it drops.
Key events
Nick Timothy has also said too many politicians “lack seriousness” following the defection of his shadow cabinet predecessor Robert Jenrick to Reform UK.
Speaking to GB News, the new shadow justice secretary said he did not recognise the characterisation of the Conservative party Jenrick gave during a speech at a press conference on Thursday.
Timothy said:
One of the things about yesterday that I think was really important was the contrast between Kemi’s leadership as somebody who acted decisively and takes very seriously those challenges [which the country faces], and the sense of backbiting and backstabbing and the lack of seriousness that we see in too many politicians.
We saw it actually, to be fair, towards the end of our time in government before the 2024 general election.
We see it every day with this Labour government, constant speculation about the future of the prime minister, constant U-turns, constant clamouring by members of the Cabinet for the top job. And we see it in the Reform party as well.
But what Kemi showed was clarity of thought, strength of character and that’s the kind of leadership that the country needs.
New shadow justice secretary apologises after Jenrick’s Reform defection
Hello and welcome to the UK politics live blog with me, Tom Ambrose.
This morning we start with follow-up and reaction to Robert Jenrick’s dramatic sacking from the Tories and subsequent – if not depressingly unsurprising – defection to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
The shadow justice secretary was Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s leadership rival and had been the bookies favourite to replace her after she failed to make any sort of impact on the polls.
Jenrick was sacked from the shadow cabinet and suspended from the Conservative party after Badenoch said she was presented with “irrefutable evidence” that he was planning to defect.
And so he did just hours later, wheeled out as Farage’s latest recruit to Reform, in what is fast becoming the political equivalent of Trigger’s broom, stacked with the former Tories they say broke Britain.
It comes as Nick Timothy said he was “sorry” for how the Conservatives “handled certain things in those last few years” in power.
The new shadow justice secretary told BBC Breakfast it was clear the country had been “let down by some of the things that happened”.
Asked whether he was sorry, Timothy said:
I’ve said as a Conservative I’m sorry for the way the party has handled certain things in those last few years and I’ve been very open about that since I was elected for the first time 18 months ago.
The Conservative party will not move on and not persuade people to vote for us in the future in the numbers that we need unless we do look them in the eye and say we understand why we lost that election.
Timothy added that Jenrick was “a friend of mine” but that the public were sick of “the backbiting and the backstabbing” in politics.
He said:
Yeah, Rob’s been a friend of mine for some time. It’s obviously disappointing that he’s decided to move on, but the thing is, what we learned yesterday is the clear contrast between the Conservatives led by Kemi Badenoch and the other parties and what they offer Britain today.
The public are sick of the backbiting and the backstabbing and the lack of seriousness in our political parties when the challenges that the country faces are so serious, Kemi was given irrefutable evidence of what was about to happen, and she acted very decisively.
Badenoch, meanwhile, is expected to speak to the media later this morning. Stay tuned for that when it drops.
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