Kemi puts the knife in first: Has sacking Jenrick made her stronger?

This is a Global Player Original Podcast. This morning, I removed the Conservative whip from Robert Jenrich after dismissing him from the Shadow Cabinet. I was very sorry to be presented with clear, irrefutable evidence, not just that he was preparing to defect. It is my responsibility to protect our party, and faced with that information, I took the only decision that any responsible leader could. Because the British public are tired of political psychodrama.

So am I. This is, without doubt, the most delicious political story of the week. Kemi Badenot Coming out on video to announce she has sacked summarily dismissed her cabinet colleague Robert Jenrick for disloyalty. It's a sign of just how deep the fractures are within the Conservative Party faced by the challenge of Nigel Farage's reform. So is this the end of the Tory party as we know it? Or Kemi Badenok's great opportunity. Welcome to the news agents. The news agents.

It's John. It's Emily. And I have to be honest, I thought when I woke up this morning I had killed the news. The news has been nonstop. You have had the most brilliant ten days without me. And this morning It went flat as a pancake. Nothing We've had a brilliant three weeks without you, in fairness. Had a fantastic time without me. Thanks. And this morning I sort of thought, Well, where have the news gods gone? And then at around eleven o'clock they resurfaced. With this video.

that showed Kemmie Badenock getting on the front foot ahead of an announcement that she was expecting from her shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, the man who has always aspired, shall we say, to be in Kemi Badnock's shoes, and she announced that she is sacking him, with immediate effect. And at first we don't know why. And it becomes clear that she has worked out that Jenrick was on the verge of defection.

To the Reform Party, to Nigel Farage's gang, and she found out because two of his colleagues discovered a resignation letter he had left, quote, lying around. which was basically in the final stages of a draft. and described what he was about to do.

So nineteen nineties that something was almost left on a photocopier and someone pulled up the photo, Oh, there's the original draft that you were leaving behind. I mean, maybe it's a bit trite to draw parallels with a television programme on at the moment. But it does seem like someone has been up to the turret, the hood has been pulled back, and there is the traitor, Robert Jenrick, no longer a faithful, even though we have doubted for some time that he was a faithful to Kemi Baidnauck.

For as long as Kemi Badenok has been leader He has been trying to chart a distinct path which is ever closer to reform, putting out social media videos, quite well produced, but which are on the edge of what is acceptable. and what would be considered mainstream conservative thinking, causing offence, provoking, getting a lot of likes, getting a lot of attention, exactly what he wanted.

But what he's done now is he's fumbled the big moment because Kemi Badenok has stolen his thunder by saying, No, no, Robert, you're not quitting. You're fired. There are so many questions this raises.

First of all, I was If he was about to go with a big flourish, she says in a way that would be most damaging to the Conservative Party. Is he still as attractive to Nigel Farage? And we should just bring you what Nigel Farage has already said this morning in his own press conference, which is conversations were had, nothing was settled. Was he in talks with you to defect to reform? I'm very surprised uh that this news is broken.

Are you though? Well I never reveal private conversations with anybody, which is why, you know, when people like Malcolm came to me to talk and he was a front bencher, nothing ever leaked. So um I'm going to um I'm gonna say that I've had conversations with a number of very senior Conservatives over the course of the last week, over the course of the last month, and a lot of them realise yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n

The Conservative Party will cease to be a national party. So I think when Farage says, I'm very surprised that this news is broken, he is very surprised that the news is broken. I think he's actually telling it straight. which was that conversations I'm sure were going on between him and Jenrik, but Kemi Badenock has literally stolen the thunder from both of them. Because

What Nigel Farage likes I think more than getting people over from the Tories is the announcement of getting people over from the Tories. He loves that moment of watching the collective Tory party face fall, as he imagined. when he's taken somewhere away. But if you look at what's happened in the past Three days. Nadem Zahwe, defected to reform,

And then it emerged through Pippaque that actually he'd asked for a peerage and that hadn't gone his way. Jenrick about to defect reform. We I should say I've messaged Robert Jenrik, I haven't heard back from him. We'd love to hear his side of the story and all this. But he doesn't get to defect with fanfare and trumpets and all the rest of it. And so at the moment it looks more like the Reform Party is picking up soiled Tory goods. Rather than scalp.

So what Nigel Farage needs as the leader of reform, if you are an opposition party How do you get attention? Because you're not doing anything, it's only what you're saying. So if you can present new faces who've suddenly announced I'm leaving my party, I'm crossing over to reform, then that gives Nigel Farage another kind of scalp, another news conference, another news cycle, which he will dominate. If it's just him saying we've got a new transport policy

For Wales, it's not gonna get that much attention from the press because it's not gonna be enacted. He is not in power. And so for Vibes, it's great to have announcement after announcement after announcement.

The reason I sort of said at the top, is this the end of the Conservative Party, or Kemi's Great Opportunity? What we do not know, or maybe it will become clearer. is whether Robert Jenrich had thirty or forty Tory MPs who were of like mind, who were disaffected, who felt that Nigel Farage was right on reform and were going to defect with him, or whether Robert Jenrick Is this lone, sad voice remained?

who suddenly kind of got disaffected with the Tory party and has gone and actually will strengthen Kemi Badenock's hand. Because I've got to say that video from Badenok looked pretty strong and it does sound like an episode of House of Cards. Where she gets the knife in first. before she is knifed herself. And it just shows the skullduggery.

that is going on within the Conservative Party right now? I mean I think you can even go back a step and say, as Farage did actually The fact that she got through November, which was the first time when a challenge to her position was possible after a a year in the job.

She got through that and scathed. She has performed better since then. The polls have shown that people are responding to that. I mean small incremental ways, but you know, the Tories overtaking Labour and reform coming down to one of their lowest positions for about a year. I think all tell the same story was that Jenrik was, in chess terms, pretty boxed in, nowhere to go. You know, he needs Kemi to fail badly.

for him to be able to take her job. When she starts doing well and when the party starts responding, when the polls start responding to that, then he's thinking, Well what am I gonna do? You know, chop liver as you would say. Am I just gonna sit here being the shadow justice secretary for another three years or however long? And so he had his first meetings, we understand, with Farage in December.

And presumably thought, oh, January, New Year, this is the time when it makes the most impact. This is gonna be it. I don't know whether he knew about Nadim Zahwe. I don't know whether that will have helped or hindered him. But we do know that and the Times has done a runaround of people you're talking about, friends of Jenricks in the party.

to find out whether they're going to join. Now maybe they would obviously say that they weren't because once you've said you are then that becomes a story and they have to go. But if he quits now, or if he's sacked now and then joins, and nobody comes with him I don't think that makes either Farage or Jenny.

looks strong at all. This is putting this is putting Kemi into a place where, as I say, she's got rid of the stuff that's floating around on the top of the party that she doesn't really want. What's that stuff called? You know, you skim it off. The skim the surface foul. So she's got rid of that. And in a way it clears her path to get on. I mean, we should perhaps talk about some of Jenrik's greatest hits before we go on, because

For many, this move started last September, October at the Tory Party conference. We just got there in Manchester when that video surfaced. of Jenrik walking around Handsworth, a suburb of Birmingham, talking about how he hadn't seen any white faces. Little gentle reminder. You know, I went to Handsworth in Birmingham the other day to do a video on litter.

And it was absolutely appalling. It's as close as I've come to a slum in this country. But the other thing that I noticed there was that it was one of the worst integrated places that I've ever been to. In fact in the hour and a half that I was filming with the news there, I didn't see another white face. So Robert Jenrick

has been on a political journey. I mean he came into Parliament as a relatively centrist Conservative MP, uh voted to remain in the European Union, was sort of beloved of the Theresa Mays of this world. and was very close to Rishi Sunak. And he's been on a journey that has taken him further to the right. And what is unclear to me is whether his journey to the right Is coinciding with his political ambition. I this is my best A J D Vance as we call it. Exactly. Doing exactly a J D Vance, thinking

I've got more to gain by being further to the right. And so I'm not sure how sincere his politics are, but we can hear him now talking candidly about what he thinks. about Nigel Farage. This is back in September. I don't think Nigel is the bloke that you want to have running your kids' schools. or running your local hospital.

Or as the public finances continue to collapse under Rachel Reeves, trust your savings, your pension, your small business too. So he's not a big fan of Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage thinks even less In past interviews. Have a listen to this. You might have seen pictures of Robert Jenrick. Turning up outside the Bell Hotel, the Migrant Hotel in Epping, in Essex.

And what he's saying is, I'm on your side. I'm with you the people. What's going on is a disgrace. Well, when he was immigration minister just a couple of years back, it was very, very different. Here he is boasting. that he's going to open more migrant hotels than all the ministers that went before him. So they're gonna get along just fine, those two, because there is a lot of video evidence of how much they blatantly disagreed with each other and thought the other one was a bit shit.

I mean, just to put the immigration minister stuff in context, yes, a slightly chubby version of the Robert Jenrick we have now may have been in favour of opening hotels. He was also the one that greeted Kids arriving, you know, Oh yeah, how to have the cartoons painted over. Exactly. Let's paint over Mickey Mouse because that's a really good way of deterring migrants from coming to this country. You know, it's the thing that that will most in political terms, in policy terms

will really cut those numbers down. It's just getting rid of a cartoon mural. So yeah, as you say, he has euphemistically been on quite a journey. I think he's found himself I mean, I don't think he's found himself a political home yet. That's the funny thing. He sort of wants the Tory party to be where he is.

and he's already slagged off reform as not being a serious enough party. So I don't know how those conversations are gonna go from now. We're expecting Farage to give another press conference a couple of hours after we finish recording this. and you will know by the time you listen to this whether he has been hailed as the great new thing and the next big hope, or whether there has been very little

mention of Jenric in whatever Farage decides to do next? I think so far Kemi Bagenock has played this well. And I think not just in the sacking of Jenric But you spoke about the Times reporting saying that none of Generic's allies. Because what's happened now is that the searchlight is on them. You know, Kemi Badenok's got the searchlight on. She's identified where the escape party

has been digging the tunnel and she's seeing, right, anyone in that tunnel, if you're planning on escaping, identify yourselves now. And they'll say, Oh no, no, no, no, no, we're with you. And then they would look absolute idiots. if they defect, you know, three weeks, six weeks later. And so I think this probably has shored up her position for the moment. But it shows that the right of British politics and the Conservative Party in the twentieth century was the most effective political machine

arguably that the world had ever seen. They kept on winning elections. There was only one leader of the twentieth century who became leader and then didn't win an election. I mean they were just formidable. And now you see the Conservative Party tearing itself apart, which started with Brexit but has continued since then. Okay, so the big question I want to know now is does the removal of generic from the front bench

Allow Kemi Badenock to say we are gonna do cost of living. We're gonna do grown up Sort of old school Tory issues. We're gonna do cost of living, economics, we're gonna pull labour down for the stuff that they get wrong, the U turns, all the all the you know I mean wasn't it? weird when Labour overdid their ID card, there w there were five parties in opposition who all agreed with each other that it was a terrible idea. So Kemi can position herself now as being

The party of economics now, rather than the culture war. The question is But does it help her? To have him out of the party, or was he a useful foil within it? where she could show that she was taking the party in a different direction to him. We always talk about the tent in or out. If he's on the outside, does he have stuff on her? Does he have stuff on other Tories?

that he can then use or sort of weaponise or make life uncomfortable, which he was keeping quiet when he was inside, or does it give her this clear sleigh to be able to say, Go off and do your garbage, racist, handsworth, you know, running around social media stuff. We're gonna be a party of government next. Or no. I think that Genric had become a distraction and that every time he spoke

You felt to defend him or she had to defend him, but he looked like he was the leader apparent who was just waiting for her to fall. And so him out of the way is probably helpful because it's hard to see who else in the Conservative Party. presents a real challenge to her leadership. I also think as we start twenty twenty six there is a political space that has opened up for the Conservatives. And you're absolutely right. Economy not culture wars. And you go back to a kind of simple

smaller government, lower taxation, you've got a Labour government that is spending more and more and more and more, unable to deliver welfare reform. You've got a reform party that leans in To keeping welfare spending high because so many of reform supporters are on benefits and in red wall seats. And so you've got He's gotta do the mental gymnastics on that one. He's gotta do the mental and so you could just see Timmy Badenok saying, Right.

We've taxed the British people too much, the government spends too much, we've got to get back to old Thatcherite ways of simplifying our lives. And I think that that's a powerful message. I just think it's a space.

that she has got now because of the way Keir Starmer's governing and because of the political positioning of Nigel Farage. I rang round a few fairly senior toys today to try and get the temperature And interestingly, one said it will make very little difference in the polls, but it will force us to confront the basic challenge, should we or should we not unite the right?

So I think just to take us into the next logical step, if some of the conversations over the past year have been, well, if reform's on top, will it bring the Tory party in with it and and win more seats? If reform is now not necessarily going to be on top, I mean obviously they are at the moment, but you know, is there movement between the Tories and reform? If the Tories don't need reform, then that's a different space.

And if you've got a defection like this, is Kemmie saying, I'm carving my own path? I'm definitely, definitely not going near reform at all and if so Might that be great news for the progressive parties who are probably thinking, Well, Starmer's not gonna do it on his own next time, but if the Greens, if the Lib Dems

Who knows? You know, other parties came into something that looked like a coalition or a sort of an informal coalition, could they beat either reform or the Tories, but not both together? Look. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. I mean these are monumental events that have unfolded today and we don't know how the pieces settle yet. But for all that reforms. is in front in the polls right now. It's still an awful long way to go before a general election.

When there's going to be greater scrutiny of reform, its policies, who else is going to be there apart from Nigel Farage? Have they got a governing agenda? Do we want to take the risk? The world's an uncertain place. All those other things. that will play in favour of the two main parties. So I don't think we know yet, but I think that Kemi Badenok comes out of today

Looking pretty good for the moment. I mean what happens next though could change all of that. We'll be back with somebody who knows the Conservative Party inside out in just a moment. The leader of the Liberal Democrats said Listen on our free LBC app. Leading Britain's conversation.

The news agents. Well, we're joined now by Paul Goodman. Lord Goodman, former MP, Tory Peer, and former editor of Conservative Home. And if anyone understands the machinations of what goes on in the Conservative Party, it is Paul Goodman. Anatomise for us what has happened today. So what's happened today is not, I think, particularly surprising if you follow the events of recent months.

Robert Jenrich, first of all, a very ambitious man. Second, a man who didn't win the Tory leadership. But third someone who's had a change of heart over the last few years has been very quiet recently. When politicians go quiet you often think there's something brewing. Um and so it proved. I saw Robert back in, I suspect, October, when he came to speak to Conservatives at Wickham, where I was MP and still involved, and he struck me then as being very subdued and quite low.

And it's sort of pretty obvious that his place in the market could take him to reform or he could stick. But he's decided to twist rather than stick. So explain the subdued because Tory conference many of our listeners will recall was that rather awkward release of the Handsworth video when he sort of said he

gone around parts of Birmingham, hadn't seen another white face and then it became quite complicated for the rest of the Tory part to decide whether they sort of slap him down or support him. And I think Kemi found herself in the middle of of that a little bit. Then there was November, uh after which he could have challenged her if he'd wanted to, because she'd been in her post for a year.

And he didn't. Do you think I mean, do you think the air went out for him because she got better? Or do you think he was just dr more and more drawn to Knights of Raj's party. I'd take a step back from the Hansworth video and try and look at it in the round. But I think with politicians often very difficult to separate the personal from the political and I don't know, uh Robert Jenrick himself may not know, to what degree the change he's gone through in the last few years

is driven by personal ambition and how much has been his real discovery at the home office when he was there, how the immigration system simply doesn't function. I think it's very hard to disentangle the two. So this change has been coming for a while that has seen him transform from the person who Farage at one point called Robert the Remainer. This fairly standard sort of Cameroon up and coming minister who's gone through this remarkable change in the last few years.

So uh going back to the beginning, I don't really find what's happened particularly surprising. And as you said there just at the end, Kemi Badenok had a good conference. At some point last year, she got off the territory in which she's naturally the most comfortable. which is culture war and the stuff that interests her. She changed her advisors. She brought in people like John Glenn, who's an MP with lots of experience, Francis Moore to help with speeches.

they really have changed the way it all works and made it much more Professional. However, having said that, you've got the local elections in a few months and the fact of the matter is that for all Kebby Baidenot's improved ratings, uh reform is still out in front of us. So Paul, let me uh try help me understand this. Is this a good day?

Or a bad day for Kemi Badenog? Uh it's a day in which she's made the best of it that she could. I mean someone said to me earlier, this is kind of make or break. for the Tory party, but I sort of thought if it's break, this was going to happen anyway. If she'd not fired him, he would presumably have gone. I don't think there's much doubt about that. And if more defections follow, they follow. The only thing she can do is respond to it as best she can, and she took the only decision

she could really take. And it was very decisive that video, and from what we're reading now, she didn't speak to him herself. She got her chief whip to go and sack him as well. So putting this a sort of leadership distance almost between herself and I suppose that's the way things are done. You don't want to get into a kind of undignified yes, I did know you didn't squabble yourself. If I were her and I were the whip.

You'd be asking the inevitable question now, of course, which is who's next? Who's next? Right. Who who else is is going, is X going? Is Y going? Who do you replace? I don't know if it's b been announced well I've been been coming here, but who do you replace? Robert Jenrik where that always the thing to look at you know in these circumstances is kinda what happens next.

Also, what does he do? I mean he has been embarrassed by this. Do you think the air's gone out of that defection now for both him and for Arch? I think it's very difficult and if I'm I'm thinking about this out loud, but if I were him, do you now call a by election? Right. I mean you're in a you're in a desperate state. You have been embarrassed by what what's happened. You have been, if our understanding of events is right, is caught out.

the moral incentive is with your opponents. I mean just suppose, thinking out loud for the sake of the argument, says, Okay, right, I am going and I don't have a mandate to be a reform MP, so I'm going to the voters. In Newark he might well win in Wiltshire when Danny Krueger defected. I suspect that I don't know that he thought if he held a by election the right wing vote would be split and the Liberal Democrats would win. I mean Robert Generick just might pull it off.

So Stan as an independent essentially or just Stan Well Stan as Stan I'm presuming that he was going to reform or is going to reform. just that he probably wasn't going this afternoon. I've been trying to look at what Nigel Farage actually said. Farage didn't say Robert Jenrick's not coming and he wouldn't.

He just said we didn't have any plans for him to speak this afternoon. I listened to what Farage said and it was that you know, it wasn't that he wasn't expecting this. He wasn't expecting the news to break. Which is slightly different from not expecting the news. That's exactly right. And I j I just thought that was the distinction in what Farage was saying. You raised a question which you didn't answer, which is It depends on how many others follow.

Do you think there will be many? I have no idea. I mean you you you you just have to do it. But you know the party so well. Do you think there are I don't I mean th I think I think with Robert Generic it is pretty obvious that there was a question hanging in the air about would he or would he would he would he not go.

I can't think off the top of my head of anyone else who's in that I mean there is a sort opportunity now for people who are in one sense or another seem to be on the right of the party. but who haven't announced that they're going to sort of step up and do their bit for Kemi Babenock and the Conservative Party. I'm thinking of Nick Timothy, I'm thinking of Katie Lamb, you know, these are the people who she could now take this opportunity to promote.

What do you think this does to the Reform Party and what does it do to the Tory party now? Does it make a future for them together less likely. I mean start with reform. Do you think following th this week, you know, we don't know where Farage is on generic, but we know that Nadine Zahrawi made the defection and then

uh the stuff about sort of him wanting a peerage came out. Do you do you think reform is reform is looking like the party of of of damaged goods? You've got to pan the camera back a bit and really think about the big picture. The big picture is obviously one of political fragmentation. But it's also one of sort of two fairly big blocks between whom pollsters say there's not very much movement, which is a a right block and a left block. So the logic of that, sooner or later, is a hung parliament.

In a hung Parliament, Keir Starmer, or whoever's leading Labour then, has got lots of options. They can go to the Lib Dems, they can go to the SNP, they can go, though they won't much like it, to the Greens and the Gaza independents. Fanarch can't go to any of those people. And the Tories, I think they're not.

barring a a national crisis, can't go to any of those people. So the only place for those two to go is to each other. So th the situation as we go forward is in a way a bit unreal, which is just project yourself forward to a few months. before the general election, you you both know the parliament's going to be hung and you have Farage or Batenock in here and you say to Bednock, Are you going to do a deal with Farage? No. To your local Tory counted it, however, a

The rumour in the street is that there will be some sort of arrangement after the election, right? So both the parties are in a very difficult position because if you're a voter and you don't like reform Why would you vote Conservative if you think the Conservatives are going to deal with a reform? If you're a reform voter and you don't like the Conservatives, vice versa. And similarly, on the left. You know, there'll be a similar to and fro among voters who who go left.

uh between Greens and Gaza Independence and your party and Labour about where to go. So we're approaching kind of extraordinary election which they've all got to pretend they're going to win outright. But it looks unlikely that any of them will, and the voters will know in these circumstances that none of them will.

reform winning an election on their own. It's possible. Although they've had a a a dip and um you know appear at the moment to have peaked. Politics is a volatile business. And they could go up. But the long term logic of this fragmentation that's been going on since

What you know, this what was it, the Torrington by election in nineteen fifty eight, right? The long decline of the two big parties is a hung parliament sooner or later. Paul Goodman, absolutely brilliant to speak to you. Thank you so much for coming in. Thanks very much. Thank you very much.

The news agents. And before we go on the news agents USA, we'll be talking about Minnesota and what's happening on the streets and Donald Trump's threat to invoke the Insurrection Act. And what that could mean, not only for Minnesota, but every state in the United States of America. We'll be speaking to Ben Smith of Semaphore as well. And I should also add that the news agents as a gang are off to Minnesota tomorrow. We'll be reporting from there from the protest.

From Iceland over the weekend and bring you more over the coming week. In the meantime, we will see you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Bye for now. This has been a Global Player Original Production.