Robert Jenrick defects to Reform hours after Tory sacking

FORMER Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick defected to Nigel Farage's right-wing Reform UK on Thursday (15), hours after he was sacked from the Conservatives when his plans to switch allegiance were leaked.

Jenrick joins at least a dozen prominent Tories who have joined Reform which, before an election due in 2029, is ahead of both prime minister Keir Starmer's Labour party and Kemi Badenoch's Conservatives in opinion polls.

"The two main parties are rotten," Jenrick told a news conference alongside Farage. "They are no longer fit for purpose. They both broke Britain, and neither can fix it."

He will become the second sitting lawmaker to have switched to Farage's party, giving it six seats in Britain's 650-seat parliament.

Earlier in the day, Tory leader Badenoch sacked Jenrick from her senior policy team and suspended him from the party, saying he was plotting to defect.

Jenrick lost to Badenoch in the 2024 contest to lead the main opposition party after their crushing national election defeat and was then, in an effort to reunite the party, given the role of justice spokesperson.

Jenrick has used that position to build a personal profile on key issues like immigration and crime that many saw as a platform for a future challenge to Badenoch's leadership, as the Conservatives sought to counter a dramatic loss of support to Reform UK.

"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," Badenoch said on X.

She did not say which party he was planning to defect to, and Jenrick did not respond to a request for comment.

Farage said he had previously spoken with Jenrick and had "little doubt" that he was considering defecting to Reform, although an agreement was not imminent.

"I’m very surprised that this news has broken," Farage told reporters in Scotland. "Was I on the verge of signing a document with him? No. But have we had conversations? Yes.”

Jenrick, who held various ministerial roles in the previous Tory government, has undergone a transformation from being a staunch party centrist to moving towards the right with his strong criticism of immigration policies.

The Conservatives are Britain's oldest and most successful political party, governing for 32 of the last 46 years.

But their reputation has been badly damaged by a 14-year spell in power that included the hugely divisive Brexit referendum, several chaotic leadership changes and market crises, culminating in the party's worst electoral defeat in its history.

(Reuters)