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Kemi Badenoch sacks Robert Jenrick for plotting to defect
Kemi Badenoch has sacked Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, for plotting to defect.
She has posted this on social media.
I have sacked Robert Jenrick from the Shadow Cabinet, removed the whip and suspended his party membership with immediate effect.
I was presented with clear, irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect in a way designed to be as damaging as possible to his Shadow Cabinet colleagues and the wider Conservative Party.
The British public are tired of political psychodrama and so am I. They saw too much of it in the last government, they’re seeing too much of it in THIS government.
I will not repeat those mistakes.
Key events
The latest episode of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast is out. It features Kiran Stacey and John Harris talking about Robert Jenrick’s sacking.
Badenoch should publish evidence she claims to have that Jenrick about to defect, says former Tory cabinet minister
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Tory cabinet minister who has not defected to Reform UK but who would like the Tories and Reform, has said that if Kemi Badenoch has clear evidence that Robert Jenrick was about to defect, she should publish it.
Speaking on the World at One, he said:
If the evidence is there, they should definitely publish it. I think that makes Kemi’s position extremely strong.
If it’s true that Robert was planning to defect and was planning to do so in a way that was damaging to the party, then removing the whip and removing him from a shadow cabinet is a reasonable thing for a party leader to have done.
If there isn’t any evidence for that, it’s an over-reaction, and I think it strengthens Kevin’s position if she reveals the evidence that exists.
In an interview earlier, Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, said he had seen evidence that Jenrick was planning to defect in a “treacherous” way. (See 12.31pm.) It has been reported that this evidence was a draft resignation speech, but Hollinrake did not confirm that.
Given that the draft resignation speech is thought to be damning about Badenoch, then it is not hard to see why CCHQ is not publishing it on its social media account.
My colleague Jessica Elgot says the text was also damning about some of Jenrick’s colleagues.
Party sources say that Jenrick’s planned resignation speech included vicious criticism of shadow cabinet colleagues, including Priti Patel and Mel Stride.
In the past there has been speculation that Jenrick could defect to Reform UK in return for a promise that he would be chancellor in a Nigel Farage-led government. The fact that he has been sacked today makes this less likely, because his joining would no longer be a PR coup for Farage, and so he has lost much of the leverage he had to negotiate a decent job in return for switching.
Jenrick argues that the last Tory government failed on immigration, and so it is not surprising that his draft resignation speech included a passage criticising Priti Patel, who was home secretary when legal immigration soared.
The fact that he was also planning to criticise Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, may confirm suspicions that he fancies himself as a potential Reform chancellor. In a New Statesman article on Jenrick’s defection, Will Lloyd says:
Jenrick had told friends in recent weeks that he thought Reform lacked a viable economic spokesperson and an eventual shadow chancellor.
George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, says that, if Kemi Badenoch thinks that sacking Robert Jenrick will end the Tory psychodrama (see 11.11am), she is wrong. Speaking on the latest edition of his Political Currency podcast this morning, recorded as the news was breaking, he said:
Is Kemi Badenoch forcing [Jenrick’s] hand or has her hand been forced because he’d already made his decision? She’s certainly saying she’d seen evidence he was about to defect. Then that is the proper beginning of the civil war inside [the] right about who is going to lead the right.
And what are Tory MPs going to do? Are they going to defect to Reform? Is the pressure going to grow to have an alliance with Reform? Or are they going to say, look, the Jenricks of this world can leave, but we think the future lies with the Tory party …
If [Badenoch] thinks the psychodrama is over, I’m afraid it’s just beginning.
James Heale from the Spectator says some Reform UK members are not all thrilled about the prospect of Robert Jenrick joining the party.
Some unhappiness within Reform at the prospect of a Jenrick defection.
One councillor says: “While I personally like Jenrick. I can’t see how he could be defecting if Nigel had called him a fraud and said he wasn’t to be trusted. [See 1.15pm.]
“Yes, I think he could be an asset to Reform. But I cannot for the life of me understand why Nigel would be entertaining a man he personally called a fraud.
“It makes us look ridiculous. It’s bad enough when someone defects and has had a pop at Nigel or Reform previously, but it’s worse when it’s the other way round.”
‘This man is a fraud’ – what Farage said about Jenrick less than five months ago
While Nigel Farage did not rule out accepting Robert Jenrick as a defector at his press conference this morning, he also suggested that Jenrick’s record in government might be a problem for him (see 11.38am) – although Reform UK has been happy to take other former Tories associated with policy failure.
But, only last summer, Farage was attacking Jenrick on social media because of his record as an immigration minister. “This man is a fraud, this man is not to be trusted,” Farage said in this video.
When Robert Jenrick was immigration minister he grew the number of illegal migrants living in free hotels to 56,000.
He is no friend of Epping. pic.twitter.com/E6HMry5AOX
— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) August 20, 2025
Around the same time, Farage also posted this on X.
Keith Girling, a Conservative councillor on Nottinghamshire county councils representing a ward in Robert Jenrick’s Newark constituency, told PA Media he felt “totally betrayed” by the MP. He said:
I’m obviously very, very, very disappointed in Robert. I’m a great believer in loyalty and he’s shown a complete lack of loyalty there.
I think Kemi has done absolutely the right thing when she finds evidence of what he’s plotting to do. She’s shown real leadership there to sack him, kick him out of the party, and we’ll deal with the aftermath.
And this is what Keir Starmer’s press secretary has said about Robert Jenrick at the lobby briefing this morning.
Robert Jenrick was the immigration minister in a government that presided over an open borders experiment, a health minister who left people stuck on waiting lists, and a Treasury minister during the worst decline in living standards on record.”
While Reform continues to welcome failed Tory retreads, this Labor government is putting the country back on track.
Starmer accuses Badenoch of ‘weakness’, saying Jenrick should have been sacked months ago for ‘toxic’ comments
Keir Starmer has said that Kemi Badenoch should have sacked Robert Jenrick long ago for his “toxic” comments. On a visit in Scotland, Starmer said:
My question is: why did it take so long? Jenrick has been making toxic comments to try and divide our country for months, and months, and months, but it’s only now, when he’s on the verge of defecting to Reform, that Badenoch gets around to sacking him. So, that’s weakness on her part.
(For examples of what Starmer meant when he was talking about Jenrick’s “toxic” politics, you could start by reading his Tory conference speech this autumn.)
Referring to in general to Tory MPs defecting to Reform UK, Starmer said:
There’s a bigger story here, because we’re seeing a flood of Tory politicians, ex-politicians, going across to Reform because they know that the Tory party is a sinking ship.
Equally, from Reform’s point of view, you’ve got Nigel Farage who is welcoming these failed politicians into his ranks and building his party as a party of the Tory politicians who let the country down so badly.
There are now at least 24 former Tory MPs in Reform UK. There is a list of 20 of them here, and since it was published Ben Bradley and Zahawi have defected. The list does not include two Reform UK MPs, Lee Anderson and Danny Kruger, who were both first elected as Tories.
Labour chair says Badenoch has ‘lost control of party’ – while Labour MP praises her ‘strong leadership’ sacking Jenrick
Anna Turley, the Labour chair, says the sacking of Robert Jenrick shows that Kemi Badenoch has “lost control of her party”. In a statement she says:
This is just the latest sad soap opera episode from a chaotic Conservative party that is sliding deeper and deeper into irrelevance.
Kemi Badenoch was too weak to sack Robert Jenrick when he complained about not seeing white faces in Birmingham. She defended him over his disgusting comments while he was plotting to defect. That tells you everything you need to know about her judgment.
Badenoch has lost control of her party and the architects of 14 years of Tory failure are now scuttling off to inflict their same chaos through Farage’s Reform. With 23 ex-Tory MPs now swelling Nigel Farage’s ranks already, and apparently Jenrick to come, it’s clear that Reform are just a shop front for failed Conservatives that wrecked public services and made people poorer.
But the Labour MP Karl Turner has posted a message on social media saying the opposite.
Strong determined leadership. Well done @KemiBadenoch the Tories are better served without threats of defection from the likes of @RobertJenrick. I thank Robert for what he’s done to try to defeat the governments ludicrous proposals on juries but his politics generally are awful.
In Labour terms, Turner is an outlier. He is currently leading a backbench revolt against the government’s plans to restrict access to jury trials.
‘Treacherous’ Jenrick motivated to defect by ‘personal ambition’, Tory chair Kevin Hollinrake says
Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, is being interviewed on the BBC about the sacking of Robert Jenrick. Asked what the evidence was of Jenrick’s disloyalty, Hollinrake says he cannot say, but he insists he has seen the evidence. It came from Jenrick “inner circle”, he says.
He says Jenrick was “treacherous”. He “didn’t take losing the leadership contest well”, he says
(It has been reported that Kemi Badenoch got hold of a copy of a draft of Jenrick’s resignation speech. See 11.50am.)
He says he thinks “personal ambition” was Jenrick’s motive.
Q: When Nadhim Zahawi defected, the party said that Reform UK was a refuge for has-been politicians. Is that what you think of Jenrick?
Hollinrake says he thinks Zahawi also defected out of personal ambition. He says Zahawi had several times asked for a peerage, and been turned down.
Q: Do you think Jenrick was going to defect at the Reform UK press conference in Westminster scheduled for this afternoon?
Hollinrake says it was clear that Jenrick was planning to defect “in the near future”.
Nigel Farage himself said categorically that he was not planning to announce Jenrick’s defection at the 4.30pm press conference. (See 11.38am.) It is thought that Farage plans to use it to announce Reform UK is going to judicial review to challenge the government’s decision to delay some council elections. (See 9.37am.)
Jenrick ‘completely out of his depth’ as minister, former Tory government colleague claims
The former Tory minister Tim Loughton has become one of the first Conservatives to put the boot in to Robert Jenrick on social media. In a post on X, he says:
Dealt with Jenrick a lot as Immigration Minister whilst negotiating amendments to Immigration Bill. He invariably had to defer to officials completely out of his depth then flounced off claiming he couldn’t get his own way on reducing immigration rather than staying and fighting.
Evidence that Jenrick about to defect ‘totally irrefutable’, Tories say
This is what a Tory source told PA Media about Robert Jenrick being sacked.
We have had lots of reports coming in that he was meeting with Reform. He went for dinner with Nigel Farage last month, he had been speaking to people within Westminster about the possibility of a defection.
His team has spoken to various people, including journalists, about defection.
Kemi doesn’t take decisions lightly, she thinks about these things, she analyses things properly. But the evidence was just totally irrefutable that this was going to be done to inflict maximum pain on the party.
Rebecca Harris, the Tory chief whip, was the person who told Robert Jenrick this morning that he was being sacked from the shadow cabinet and suspended from the party, Ben Riley-Smith reports at the Telegraph. Kemi Badenoch did not speak to Jenrick herself.
Farage claims he will announce Labour defection next week
At his press conference in Scotland, Nigel Farage was asked if any Reform UK members objected to Tories joining the party.
He replied:
The worries I get from within Reform are, one, will they bring Tory infighting with them? Because we had four and a half years of psychodrama with that last Conservative government? They fought each other in public, they fought each other in private. And so if people want to bring that with them, they’re not wanted by our membership, they’re not wanted by our board, and they’re not wanted by me.
And secondly, you know, we will not be a Tory party 2.0 because we have a completely different set of policies and people [who join] have to say they admit that net zero, mass migration, North Sea taxes and many other things were a terrible mistake. They have to make real mea culpas.
But Farage went on:
I’ll have a Labour defection next week and that’ll change the script.
At his press conference in Scotland Nigel Farage has just said, “hand on heart”, that Robert Jenrick was not planning to join Reform “in the next 24 hours”.
These are from Steven Swinford, the Times’ politcal editor, on the Jenrick sacking.
Nigel Farage is said to have been in talks with Robert Jenrick for weeks if not months
We picked up rumours of a lunch between them in December that was heavily denied by both sides at the time
It sounds like Kemi Badenoch’s team got hold of a copy of Robert Jenrick’s resignation speech after it was left ‘lying around’. It was a ‘near final’ text
He cancelled a speaking engagement this weekend, and the thinking was that he was due to announce his defection in the next 24 hours
The Tories were also aware that he met Nigel Farage in December. One source said that the meeting took place in Parliament
It doesn’t sound like either Reform UK or Robert Jenrick knew this was coming
Kemi Badenoch appears to have caught them by complete surprise
She was said to be furious that Jenrick came to shadow cabinet on Tuesday and behaved as if nothing was going on
Jenrick is also said to have sat through a shadow cabinet away day last week and taken copious notes about the party’s strategy
Farage said that he regarded Robert Jenrick as part of the Tory failure on immigration. But the “one big tig” in his favour for Reform UK was the fact that he resigned from Rishi Sunak’s government, Farage said.
Farage claims Badenoch ‘panicked’, and that Reform UK was not planning to unveil Jenrick as defector later today
Farage says he was not planning to unveil Robert Jenrick as a defector at his press confence in Westminster this afternoon.
Asked to confirm that he had been speaking to Jenrick about defecting, Farage says he has already confirmed that.
He says he thinks Kemi Badenoch “panicked” and he implies she thought Jenrick was going to defect this afternoon.
I suspect she’s added up two and two and made five. I can confirm – hand on heart, honestly, look you in the eye – I was not going to be unveiling Robert Jenrick at 430 this afternoon.
Asked if Jenrick was planning to defect to Reform UK, Farage jokes that he could have been planning to defect to the Liberal Democrats.
But he says he has been speaking to many senior Tories about possible defections.
He says he welcomes defectors from other parties. But he also says the “sheer level of failures of 14 years, of broken manifesto commitments” can be be a problem.
He says he will give Jenrick a call later this afternoon.
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