Robert Jenrick is a neat little case study in modern Tory politics. He came up through the “serious” briefs - Treasury, then Housing and Local Government - the sort of jobs where you might actually fix something tangible, like planning or housing supply.
Then the party ran out of results and doubled down on performance. Jenrick pivoted accordingly, reinventing himself as an immigration hardliner. That’s not a personal quirk, it’s the Conservative Party’s default setting now. When governing fails, they don’t change policy, they change the volume and hope nobody notices the difference.
Now he’s been kicked out of the shadow cabinet, with the whip removed and his membership suspended, on the claim he was plotting to defect in a way designed to do maximum damage. Which tells you everything about the state of the party. They’re not rebuilding, they’re eating their own, in public, again. It’s less “government in waiting” and more “WhatsApp group that’s gone feral”.
As expected he's ended up in Reform, and it wasn't a principled conversion. It’s a career move. Reform is where discarded Conservatives go when they still want airtime but no longer have a route back through their own party. Farage doesn’t mind because he’s not building a normal party, he’s building a brand, and defectors are basically free advertising with a human face. Kemi, however, shot his Fox.
The bigger problem for the Conservatives is that chasing Reform is suicide. “Reform Lite” doesn’t win Reform voters because they can always get the full-fat version from Farage, now with extra shouting and fewer numbers that add up. But it does repel the people the Conservatives actually need: the boring, pragmatic centre-right who want competence, stability, and a government that doesn’t behave like a comment thread under a Daily Mail story.
Their only hope is to put clear blue water between themselves and Reform. Drop the culture-war cosplay, stop trying to out-Farage Farage, and go back to something vaguely recognisable as One Nation Conservatism: grown-up economics, functional public services, and immigration policy that’s firm but sane. Otherwise they’ll just keep shrinking until they’re reduced to a recruitment agency for Reform with a nice logo and a long memory of better days.
The decline of the Tory party can be laid at the feet of a certain Boris Johnson, who purged the sensible, One Nation Tories and replaced them with incompetents who were loyal.
Breaking news, 2026: Kemi Badenoch defects to Reform, citing “principle”, “common sense”, and a sudden desire to never answer a serious question ever again. However, Farage has rejected her as she hasn't failed seriously - yet. "A financial scandal would help though," a close associate of Farage told this reporter.
You have to laugh.
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