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

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. This morning, I removed the Conservative whip from Robert Jenrick 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, but he was planning to do so in the most damaging way possible to the Conservative Party and his shadow cabinet colleagues. 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.

0:51Kemi Badenoch 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 can we bade Knox's great opportunity? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:28The 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 10 days without me. And this morning, it went flat as a pancake. We've had a brilliant three weeks without you, in fairness. You've 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 11 o 'clock, they resurfaced with this video that showed Kemi 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 Badenock's shoes.

2:15and 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, quotes, lying around, which was basically in the final stages of a draft and described what he was about to do. It somehow seems so 1990s 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.

3:03I 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 Badenok. For as long as Kemi Baden-Ock 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.

3:50But what he's done now, 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, 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 that this news is broken.

4:31Are 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 frontbencher, nothing ever leaked. So I'm going to 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 that for all the talk that Kemi's doing better at PMQs, which is true, for all the talk of a supposed Kemi bounce, I think a lot of them realise that on May the 7th, or should I say May the 8th, the Conservative Party will cease to be a national party.

5:13So 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 is that conversations, I'm sure, were going on between him and Jenrick. But Kemi Badenok 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 imagines, when he's taken somewhere away. But if you look at what's happened in the past three days, Because Nadeem Zahawi defected to reform and then it emerged through Pippa Quirah that actually he'd asked for a peerage and that hadn't gone his way.

6:04Jenrick about to defect to reform. I should say I've messaged Robert Jenrick. 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 scalps. 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.

6:49If it's just him saying we've got a new transport policy for Wales, it's not going to get that much attention from the press because it's not going to 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 Jenrick had 30 or 40 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 who suddenly kind of got disaffected with the Tory party and has gone and actually will strengthen Kemi Baden-Koch's hand.

7:36Because I've got to say, that video from Baden-Koch 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 year in the job, she got through that unscathed. She has performed better since then. The polls have shown that people are responding to that.

8:19I 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 Jenrick 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 going to do? You know, chop liver, as you would say. Am I just going to sit here being the shadow justice secretary for another three years or however long?

8:56And so he had his first meetings, we understand, with Farage in December and presumably thought, ah, January, New Year, this is the time when it makes the most impact. This is going to be it. I don't know whether he knew about Nadeem Zahawi. I don't know whether that will have helped or hindered him. But we do know that the Times has done a runaround of people you're talking about, friends of Jenrick's 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.

9:39I don't think that makes either Farage or Jenrick look strong at all. 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 surface, the grease, the fouls. She's got rid of that. And in a way it clears her path to get on. I mean, we should perhaps talk about That's some of Jenrick'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 Jenrick walking around Handsworth, the suburb of Birmingham, talking about how he hadn't seen any white faces.

10:28A little gentle reminder. You know, I went to Hansworth 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 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, 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.

11:10And 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 chance. 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.

11:54trust, your savings, your pension, your small business too. So he's not a big fan of Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage thinks even less of Jenrick 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.

12:30We have procured more hotels. So they're going to 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 chubbier 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. Had 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.

13:09You know, it's the thing that that will most in political terms and 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 going to go from now. We're expecting Farage to give another press conference a couple of hours after we finish recording this.

13:46And 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 Jenrick in whatever Farage decides to do next. I think so far, Kemi Baden-Ock has played this well. And I think not just in the sacking of Jenrick, but you spoke about the Times reporting saying that none of Jenrick's allies, because what's happened now is that the searchlight is on them. You know, Kemi Baden-Ock'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.

14:27And they're all saying, 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 20th 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 20th 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.

15:05OK, so the big question I want to know now is, does the removal of Generic from the front bench allow Kemi Baden-Ock to say, we are going to do cost of living? We're going to do grown up sort of old school Tory issues. We're going to do cost of living, economics. We're going to pull Labour down for the stuff that they get wrong, the U-turns, all the, you know. I mean, wasn't it weird when Labour overdid their ID card? 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.

15:45The question is, 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 slate to be able to say, go off and do your garbage, racist, hands worth, you know, running around social media stuff. We're going to be a party of government next or not?

16:28I think that Jenrick had become a distraction and that every time he spoke, you felt she had to defend him. 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 2026, 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.

17:10You'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 got to do the mental gymnastics on that one. He's got to do the mental. And so you could just see Temi Badenock saying, right, we tax 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 is governing and because of the political positioning of Nigel Farage.

17:46I rang around a few fairly senior Tories 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 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.

18:31And if you've got a defection like this, is Kemi 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 going to 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 sort of an informal coalition, could they beat either reform or the Tories, but not both together? Look, the kaleidoscope has been shaken. And these are monumental events that have unfolded today.

19:09And we don't know how the pieces settle yet. But for all that reform 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.

19:53We'll be back with somebody who knows the Conservative Party inside out in just a moment.

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21:35The 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 jenrick 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.

22:20And 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. 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 Hansworth 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 decide whether they sort of slap him down or support him I think Kemi found herself in the middle of that a little bit then there was November after which he could have challenged her if he wanted to because she'd been in her post for a year and he didn't.

23:18Do you think the air went out for him because she got better or do you think he was just more and more drawn to Nigel Farage's party? I'd take a step back from the Handsworth video and try and look at it in the round. But I think with politicians it's often very difficult to separate the personal from the political. And I don't know, and 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.

23:59I 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 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.

24:40She changed her advisers. She brought in people like John Glenn, who's an MP with lots of experience, Francis Moore to help with speeches, two colleagues of mine in the Lords, Stephen Gilbert and Lord McInnes. 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 Kevin Bainlock's improved ratings, reform is still out in front. So, Paul, help me understand this. Is this a good day or a bad day for Kemmy Badenock? It's a day in which she's made the best of it that she could.

25:18I 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 him.

25:57I 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 whips you'd be asking the inevitable question of course which is who's next who else is going is X going, is Y going who do you replace I don't know if it's been announced but I've been coming here but who do you replace Robert Jenrick with always the thing to look at in these circumstances is kind of what happens next also what does he do he has been embarrassed by this do you think the air has gone out of that defection now for both him and Farage I think it's very difficult.

26:35And if 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 desperate state. You have been embarrassed by 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, OK, 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 Kruger 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.

27:18Robert Jenner just might pull it off. So stand as an independent, essentially, or just stand? Well, 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 Jenner is not coming. I mean, 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.