Sneery and uncharismatic Robert Jenrick is not the answer to Tory party’s woes: David Behrens

Perhaps that’s inevitable: Kemi Badenoch is compromised not just by Reform but also her own party. As if Liz Truss wasn’t embarrassing enough, she has Robert Jenrick carrying on as if they’re still counting last year’s leadership ballot.

Truss ought to be the easier one to deal with: she has no credibility inside or outside the party and Reform doesn’t seem to want her either but she remains in vocal denial about the reputational damage she wrought. As a result, the Shadow Chancellor, Mel Stride, is as occupied with her as with Rachel Reeves.

Jenrick is a harder nut to crack, though someone with a pair of nutcrackers should certainly try. As Shadow Justice Secretary he has sought to be an online influencer (as if that is somehow better than wielding actual influence in Westminster) filming himself as a vigilante tackling fare dodgers on the London Underground. He comes across as a cut-price comic book hero. Super Shadow Justice Boy to the rescue.

And, look, I’m not condoning criminality but if he thinks that’s the issue most concerning voters then he’s as out to lunch as his former party leader.

Of course, Jenrick had a hidden agenda. He wasn’t really interested in saving the Tube money; he was out to promote the narrative that immigration and criminality go hand in hand. That’s why he picked as his location Stratford in east London, where only one in five people are classed as White British.

And it’s why he delivered a rant to the camera about “weird Turkish barber shops” because, nudge nudge, everyone knows they’re also in it up to their necks. Mind you, if I had a haircut like his I’d be ticked off with the barber, too.

The video backfired. It became an instruction manual for future offenders on how to jump the ticket barriers; and more importantly it exposed the width of the gap between public transport in London and the service we endure in the North. Because while Jenrick has a point about casual criminality, the idea of siding with a rail operator and stigmatising the passengers is as foreign to us as weird Turkish barbers are to him.

Did he not know that up here the boot is on the other foot? That train companies have for years been taking passengers for a ride only figuratively and that travellers are being handed criminal records for making honest mistakes, more regularly than their trains are on time?

Only last week the official watchdog told rail firms to stop taking “disproportionate action” against passengers confused by complex fares. And the Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, said “ham-fisted prosecutions” were punishing innocent travellers.

It wasn’t new information: last year Northern Rail, nationalised by Jenrick’s party for the years of misery it inflicted on us all, had to climb down after illegally prosecuting more than 28,000 people for alleged fare evasion. Overstepping their authority was literally the only thing they managed to do reliably.

So how many of their customers would choose to prioritise the pursuit of fare dodgers over the provision of better services? Had Robert Jenrick chosen to film himself at Leeds Station instead of picking an easy target like Stratford, he might have had an idea.

But ideas aren’t his strong suit and neither is having a sense of proportion. Most other people who had claimed £100,000 in expenses for a third home would think it ignominious to condemn anyone for trousering a couple of quid.

His actions, though, are entirely in character. When he was Immigration Minister he told a centre for child asylum seekers to paint over its happy cartoon murals lest any little refugees get the impression that they were being made welcome.

The odd thing is that the Tories used to be good at image management. They had specialists to control the way ministers came across in the media. But do-it-yourself social videos have made them forget what they knew and Jenrick is the unhappy product of this new era: a sneery, uncharismatic little man adrift in his own reality.

And while Kemi Badenoch’s career is by no means secure, I’m willing to bet the price of a one-way ticket to Stratford that Jenrick’s is going nowhere.