Robert Jenrick, Nigel Farage and Reform UK: Editor's analysis - quockerwodger on the loose

When the message arrived, it was, in essence, like Twixtmas: in that no-man’s-land between Kemi Badenoch slaying a likely leadership rival in Jenrick, and Nigel Farage welcoming his shiny-new Trojan Horse into Reform UK - a disrupter political movement that would like to be taken seriously, and is succeeding. Whether you like it or not.

I thought to myself: well, you know. Honest Bob. He‘s not one to make a big song and dance about things, is he? I mean, given his track record as an architect of where this country finds itself right now, he’d be well-advised go quietly, with his tail between his legs, giving off an air of apologetic humility. For goodness sake, this is a man who has held Government posts since 2018 (the best part of a decade) so if the cake on his plate tastes off, his hands are covered in batter. Here's the recipe for said cake: he has been:

• Minister of State for Immigration, Home Office - so he can hardly wash his hands of the challenges this country faces when it comes to immigration. Even he’s not that stupid. Also, hello! Reform UK. What’s their flagship policy, again?
• Minister of State for Health and Social Care - I think it’s fair to say that puts his coat on a shoogly peg when it comes to detaching himself from the parlous state of the NHS, too, however… he states, without remorse nor irony: “In 2012, one-in-twenty people who went to A&E waited more than four hours. Now, it’s EIGHT times that!” Well, well done you, Robert. Quite the CV, this…
• Exchequer Secretary, HM Treasury - er, hello … again! £22bn black hole in the nation’s public finances. Shoogly peg? That’s the whole bloody cloakroom up in smoke!
• Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government - Again, these are not my words, these are the words of Robert Jenrick, Esq: “Countless communities, in less than 25 years, have become unrecognisable…unpoliceable.” No further questions, your Honour;

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What followed next might be one of the most gut-wrenchingly hypocritical speeches ever given by anyone, ever. It amounts to some 2,000 words. Two thousand words of scorched earth cowardice, barbed to cut former friends and colleagues as deeply and hurtfully as possible, yet disguised to con and lure the very same people he has spent the last decade, and then some, deceiving and downtreading whilst in multiple positions of power and influence.

Following a toe-curlingly awkward false start - Jenrick failed to appear for a good two minutes when called to the stage by Nigel Farage - Mr Geppetto’s fears that the puppet he’d captured-not-carved, for whom he had such high hopes, had gotten cold feet proved baseless, and up stepped Reform UK’s newest recruit, poised to quockerwodge for his tea before a phalanx of former Tories - a former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, no less, in Lee Anderson - whose record in Government he was about to stand and trash. It was, if you like, political speed dating, whilst sitting before would-be suitors going: “Hello. I’m Bob. You’re a bit of a minger, aren’t you!? Fancy a Nandos?”

I should add, I have deliberately reached for that delightful old noun, quockerwodger, because, in my opinion, Jenrick’s love letter to the disenfranchised appears to me to be heavily influenced by the demands of the one man who could possibly save Jenrick’s skin: Nigel Farage. Mr Jenrick is well known in my neck of the woods. People, here, have repeatedly told me that he is a dyed-in-the-wool, One Nation Conservative. A man who has given his adult life to the cause; a man who cares about his constituents. He would never, ever destroy all that he’s worked so hard for nor let down those whose trust he has won.

However, yesterday, as he unceremoniously and unemotionally threw so many supposed friends and colleagues under his angry bus, even they will have to admit they were wrong, and Matthew Parris is right. Robert Jenrick cares only about Robert Jenrick. As Matthew said on Times Radio, remove the ambition from the core of the man and he would collapse in a warm, sloppy heap like a chicken bereft of bones. Given the hypocrisy, juxtaposed with how spiteful his words were, and given so many people I know and trust have repeatedly told me that Mr Jenrick is a good man and a good Conservative, I cannot help but surmise that access for Mr Jenrick into Reform UK could come only if he did what he did. Said what he said. Humiliated who he humiliated.

The worry for me is this: who will be taken in by this latest charade? Because, and this is the bit where I’ll end up swarmed by bots, trolls and the short-of-thought: if you cannot count yourself, for whatever reason … and most of those reasons I understand and sympathise with … as being amongst the politically well-informed, the danger is you mistake this snake oil for aloe vera and begin massaging it deep into your pores. If you recognise the cause for which he now purports to stand, and share the anger he professes, and wants you to feel, and don’t really know or perhaps care about the design-and-manufacturing part he has played, alongside countless others, in creating this sensation that you’re feeling, there’s a chance you’ll be taken in.

More worryingly than that is those who will not unwittingly rub his treacherous concoction into themselves, but will do so willingly, with relish and gusto, forgetting and conveniently forgiving Mr Jenrick’s contribution, over a long period of time in power, to quite why they feel the way they do right now about their lot in life.

Because I will tell you this: for those people who have been deceived and downtrodden for so long; who feel disgruntled with life, disconnected from and disenfranchised by the democratic process, Mr Jenrick’s words will be powerful. Hypnotic, even. People who are worried about migration, and the crimes migrants commit; people who know our armed forces are depleted and our NHS knackered. People who see schools on their knees and vulnerable pensioners abandoned alone at home. Why wouldn’t you yearn for change in that context?

After all, he’s saying the same thing that those who see the rot (he helped cause) are saying: Labour and the Tories? They’re all the same. All pee in the same pot. You can’t trust them. And here’s the thing: he said it with passion, precision and purpose. Again, the trolls will come for me on this but he delivered the speech with a control and conviction that is beyond the reach of Kemi Badenoch and Sir Keir Starmer. It just is. They don’t have a command of oratory pace and rhythm like Robert does - I am sorry to say, they do not possess skills of that nature - perhaps because truth for them is more tricky to turn into poetry than fiction is for Robert. I am quite sure they would say so, at least.

So, is Robert Jenrick a new man? One who has seen the light, and changed for the better? His track record suggests you would be foolish to believe as much, and the way he treated former colleagues and friends serves only to underscore as much.

Should the two-party duopoly on power in this country be worried about the disrupter party out wide on the right? Without question. Reform UK is on the march. Whether that leads them to the top of the hill before they all fall out and fall down again remains to be seen.

James

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