Jenrick Defects to Reform Saying “Tories Broke Britain”
Robert Jenrick has defected to Reform UK, saying the “Tories broke Britain”, after being kicked out of the Conservative Party this morning by party leader Kemi Badenoch, to whom he lost 2024’s leadership contest. Here’s an edited selection of what he told this afternoon’s press conference, courtesy of the Telegraph.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It’s time for the truth. Britain has been in decline. Britain is in decline.
From 1970 to 2007 real wages went down by one-third every 10 years. Since then they flatlined. At the turn of the millennium the average Brit was earning twice as much as the average Pole. By 2031 we are on track to be poorer.
Outside of London and the south-east our economy is closer to Bulgaria’s than to Germany’s. Today 18 to 30 year-olds are the first Britons to earn less than their parents. Houses cost more here than in any other OECD country. We have the highest energy prices in the developed world.
Countless communities in less than 25 years have become totally unrecognisable. The police as we’ve seen this week can’t even police some of our largest cities.
Now my constituents in Newark feel this decline every day. It’s a great historic town. It is the honour of my life to represent it and to represent them in Parliament. They are the best of our country. They are men and women who are getting up at 6am in the morning, 7am out the door… grafting all week but finding nothing left over for something nice with the kids on the weekend.
Their bills, their taxes are surging. Their money is taken to fund hotels for those here illegally in our country or the lifestyle of the guy down the road who everyone knows could be working but isn’t working.
I challenge anyone to argue other than that Britain is completely broken. Those that came before us built a great country, the greatest country in the world. But we are set to lose it. We will for certain if this Government gets re-elected. A suicidal energy policy, crushing workers to fund scroungers on benefits, unions running our public services, payouts to terrorists, prosecutions of veterans, the bravest of the brave. Nine hundred thousand migrants in their first year, 65,000 of them illegally. Ending jury trials, cancelling elections, giving away our territory and £35 billion for the privilege. These people run Britain as if they hate it.
The two main parties are rotten. They are no longer fit for purpose. They both broke Britain and neither can fix it.
It’s a conclusion about the Conservative party that has pained me to reach because I’ve been a member of this party since I was 16 years old. I’ve served it most of my adult life. I have countless good friends in the party not least my own members in Newark.
They are the most decent patriotic people I know and I respect, I cherish the party’s contribution to our country, the party of Pitt and Peel, of Churchill and Thatcher. But our country is in a precarious, dangerous position. And my first loyalty, our first loyalty, must be to our country.
Turning it around will require each and every one of us to speak the truth. And not just to speak it but to act.
Both Labour and the Conservatives broke Britain and both are now dominated without the competence or the backbone needed to fix it.
Both parties if judged by their own actions are committed to a set of ideas that have failed and are failing Britain. Labour started mass migration but the Conservatives ramped it up. After 2019, the Conservatives almost left us without a border.
Five million came, three-quarters not to work. … When I was minister for immigration in late 2022, I fought colossal flights for reductions in legal migration alongside Suella Braverman.
There were 23 people in cabinet back then. Just one or two others were with us. Most of the party ultimately wanted what they viewed as cheap labour. And it’s the same on illegal migration. Blair enshrined the ECHR into British law.
He put the so-called human rights of illegal migrants, of terrorists, of criminals above our national security. But so did the last Conservative government.
It didn’t just keep and execute his plan, it doubled down on it with insane Net Zero targets.
In betraying its principles, the Conservative Party betrayed its members, its voters. … Over time, most of the party in Westminster lost its way. The principles were betrayed because a critical mass don’t believe in those principles at all.
After the last election, I hoped like others that the Conservative Party would change, reckon with our mistakes with humility, that it would repent. I said this after the election and I fought for it. I fought for it every day. That’s why I stood to be leader of the Conservative Party. That’s why I picked myself up the day after I lost the leadership of the Conservative Party because I hoped it would be possible.
But over the last year I realised I was naïve. It hasn’t happened. Most of the Conservative Party are in denial, or worse they’re being dishonest about what’s the party’s done.
The question was put to the [Shadow Cabinet] “is Britain broken?” I said instinctively it’s broken. Almost everyone said it’s not broken.
And we were told that is the party line. A few had a third position. It is broken but we can’t say so. Because the Conservative Party broke it.
If they won’t admit publicly to you, the British people, what they broke, what possible faith can you have in them to fix it? The Conservative Party in Westminster isn’t sorry, it doesn’t get it, it hasn’t changed, it won’t change, it can’t change.
The Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride has rightly attacked Labour for hiking taxes to fund more scrounging. But there’s just one problem. He was the cabinet minister who oversaw the explosion of the welfare bill. And it was him who blocked the reforms that are needed.
Priti Patel, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, created the very migration system that enabled five million migrants to come here, the greatest failure of any British Government in the post-war period.
When asked about it last year she defended her actions. She doesn’t believe she did anything wrong. Now listen, I respect Kemi, but I don’t trust the current Conservative Party on immigration.
Over Christmas, I attacked Labour for bringing the anti-British, antisemitic, terrorist sympathiser el-Fattah here from Egypt.
Senior figures in the Conservative party were angry at me for this because, and I quote, it “exposed the party to criticism for having granted him citizenship in 2021”.
The fact is the Conservative Party is so compromised it cannot speak for the country and oppose Labour’s madness.
So yes, I’m glad she has made getting rid of the rule of European judges Conservative Party policy. But I know from the leadership campaign at least two thirds of Conservative MPs oppose this.
I can’t kid myself any more. The party hasn’t changed and it won’t. The bulk of the party don’t get it. Don’t have the stomach for the radical change this country needs.
In opposition, it’s easy to paper over these cracks. But the divisions, the delusions, are still there. And if we don’t get the next government right, Britain will likely slip beyond the point of repair. Everything is on this.
I can’t, in good conscience, stick with a party that’s failed so badly. That isn’t sorry and hasn’t changed. That I know in my heart won’t – can’t – deliver what’s needed. That’s why I resolved to leave.
Because Nigel Farage has stood, consistently and often alone, for what’s needed.
I walked into a Home Office in late 2022 that was in ashes, that literally could not deliver the most basic function of the British state, securing our borders.
And I worked as hard as I could to improve that situation. When I lost faith in the Conservative government and the prime minister I resigned, the only person who resigned on principle from the last Conservative government.
And then after the last election I made an argument to the Conservative Party and in some respects haven’t stopped making that argument that it failed the country, that it needed to be painfully honest about the mistakes it had made, that it needed to show to the public that it was sincere in that, and then it needed to set out the serious answers to the big challenges that face our country right now.
Over time, I have come to the painful conclusion that the Conservative Party is not sorry, at least many in Westminster are not sorry, can’t change and won’t change. And I would be letting down the people that I represent in Newark and the country frankly if I put my own personal ambition, do I want to be leader of the Conservative Party, do I want to sit around the shadow cabinet table, above the most important thing to me and to everyone else.
Which is how do we get rid of this failed Labour Government and how do we replace it with a government that can actually turn things around for my children, my grandchildren and my constituents? And yes I have resolved to do that, I resolved to do that some time ago.
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I thought the speach was convincing. Now he has to knuckle down, learn the Reformation ethos from the inside and help prepare for government.
I agree with you. But there is no salvation in politics or politicians.
We have to stop the Great Replacement, and we have to remigrate the Britain-hating scum imported by the Uniparty. These two things are going to be very hard for reform.
Maybe Nigel or Reform are getting fees from the media for the news they generate. If not, they should!!
He certainly put bossy Camilla Tominey back in her box – priceless!!
Well done to him! I found this video inspiring, and he was part of it:
The Great Repeal Act – YouTube
It remains to be seen. Farage is not good at sharing the limelight. Having said that I am more concerned about the motives and track record of the other ex Conservative minister for experimental genetic biotoxins (and whose name escapes me) who jumped aboard the reform bandwagon yesterday than I am about Jenrick.
Nadim Zahawi.
Jenrick was also in Cabinet during “Covid”, told people to stay at home and travelled around himself. Don’t remember seeing his name on any of the very short lists of dissenters who voted against covid laws around masks, vaccines etc.
I would like a clear apology from Jenrick about this. If he is brave enough to denounce the make-believe vaccines, the pointless Lockdown and the insane masks, then he has a future.
I don’t recall any of them apologising
Well, he might very well do that – but only in words. He is the very embodiment of a political weathercock, and he makes the Vicar of Bray look like a man of steadfast principles. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.
Farage knows he’s got to build a team of competent people. As long as they don’t challenge his leadership, he will give them a long rein.
Another politician asking us to believe he’s a white knight.
Be an archos.
Be free.
Nigel Farage has to be very careful about all these senior Conservatives joining Reform. Zahawi is definitely NOT to be trusted. He is up to his neck in the consequences of pushing and pushing the death-jabs. I wouldn’t wish to see him within a million miles of the levers of power. Until Jenrick declaims clearly and unambiguously that the pushing of the death-jabs, the stupid masking and the insane lockdowns were all WRONG, then I don’t trust him either. Supping with the devil requires a VERY long spoon …………..
Well, then, what about some honesty in your own statements? It’s impossible to get rid of European judges in Britain unless the a policy that only first-generation immigrants from outside of Europe can become judges is installed as Britain is a part of Europe. Britain was also a founding member of the ECHR and Churchill was instrumental in creating it. The court of the ECHR is not one composed of foreign judges which have a jurisdiction over Britain but an supranational institution created by the parties which originated the ECHR, Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Great Britain and every country that’s a member of the Council of Europe has a judge sitting on this court. The problem with the ECHR and the ECtHR (the court) is not that it is European while Britain obviously isn’t but that it has been hijacked by the same kind of left-wing activists/ politicians who also hijacked the British court system and civil service to further their political causes. It was a British judge who forbade the opening of a new coal mine in Wales by claiming that the mine owners ought to be considered responsible for CO₂-emissions caused by… Read more »
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Not sure how many would agree with Rupert Lowe here. He’s polling at 9% and there’s many who are disillusioned with Reform or feel politically homeless saying they’d back him. But could he be a genuine contender, possibly if he forms an alliance? ”One message has been reinforced today, in THE most spectacular fashion. Westminster is a vile snake-pit, infested with those who put their own personal interest above that of the country. There are an exceedingly small handful of patriots, but that number is vastly outnumbered by those who have their priorities in the following order. Self. Party. Country. Party politics has failed. It has failed all of us. It’s failed Great Yarmouth, it’s failed England, it’s failed Britain. It is a circus. A pantomime. A show. With no care for what’s really being inflicted on decent taxpaying men and women. They all treat it like a sport. It’s not. It is our country. Our home. Our people. The solution? A Reform dictatorship that is packing its ranks with the very same people who decimated the country over 14 dire years? I think not. Nadine Dorries? Jake Berry? Lee Anderson? Nadhim Zahawi? Really? Are these the people to turn… Read more »
Buy the man a pint on me. He nailed it.
Surely it would benefit him more if people visited his website to read his posts, rather than giving credit to the Copy-&-Paste-the-Whole-Thing-Artist here, so that no one actually visits Rupert Lowe’s site, or Jim Chimirie’s site, etc. Talk about “basking in reflected glory”…
It was interesting to see the odious Streeting claiming the denying the people of many districts and councils was not a party political thing because it was not just Labour councils shitting themselves over Reform. But it IS party political because it is the Uniparty that is running scared of an electoral battering from Reform.
Let’s hope the Courts stop this. If they get away with it this time it will become a template.
The Courts are the legal arm of the Starmbot’s regime. So don’t hold your breath.
Jenrick doesn’t elicit quite the disgust reflex like other ‘Conservative’ politicians do, but I thought the point of Reform was that it was NOT the Uniparty, and so would do that radical and extraordinary thing of governing in the interests of the British, rather than the everybody and anybody who is Not-British.
Quite how that can happen now, with the party getting stuffed full with the same Globalist/Remainer/ECHR fetishising/Immigrationist midwits largely responsible for the enshitification of the country is beyond me.
What would Trigger say? “This new broom has had 17 old heads and 14 old handles in its time.”
The proles will buy it though.
I can’t help remembering what happened when several Labour members defected to the SDP, and look what happened to them. And remember how much time the journalists spent on it all.
Robert Jenrick has defected to Reform UK, saying The Communities Secretary in 2020 broke Britain”, when he told everyone to stay at home.
Jenrick talks a good talk but he walked with the TINOs. But Reform desperately needs experienced people, they’ll get no help from the Civil Servants.
…yet another ‘senior’ politician with a liberal arts degree, practising law, and no STEM background. Witness his claim to be Reform’s ‘281000th member’, when he no doubt meant ‘280001st’’
Count your fingers, Nigel, you’ve picked up a couple of slippery chancers this week, especially Zahawi. In your shoes I’d welcome them until 6th May and then without warning eviscerate both ‘pour descourager les autres’
I find MPs defecting a treacherous act. By doing so they don’t respect their constituents.
I understand that they may no longer support the party they stood for, but why not resign in that case and let their constituents vote again.
As he was sacked, yes, he could have resigned his membership of parliament and forced a bi-election which he almost certainly would have won. Belts and braces.
The British voting system works such that people vote for MPs and not for parties. Jenrick’s constituents voted for him and not for the Tory party, regardless of them possibly believing in something else and regardless of the parties trying as hard as they can to obscure this.
IMHO, that’s actually an advantage. Jenrick has a good reason to care for his constituents because he needs their support to become and remain their MP. German MdBs (Mitglieder des Bundestages, members of the Bundestag, the German parliament) have exactly no reason to care for voters. They got into parliament because the party leaders put them onto their candidate list and they need support of the party leadership to remain on this list.
I’m glad Jenrick has defected; I think he will be a very significant catch (unlike Dorries and Zahawi).
I’m quite pleased with the way it happened. He has no way back to the Not-a-Conservative-Party now, so his “ambitious” eggs are now all in the Reform Party.
He’ll have to behave because Nigel is very ruthless when it comes to disloyal colleagues – as he has demonstrated consistently for 25+ years.
They’re only politicians, RTSC.
What the rest of us should do is design politicians/MPs/lawmakers out of our lives.
So he’s seen the light on the road to Damascus has he? In the world of spies and counter spies, defectors have to be debriefed over a long period before being allowed to live normally. So how do Reform approach this?