Robert Jenrick used to be nicknamed “Robert Generic”: a rather boring, safe pair of hands who would happily do ministerial drudgery on behalf of a prime minister. It was one of the reasons he lost the Tory leadership contest against Kemi Badenoch: she had fire in her belly, whereas he appeared to be an AI generation of the archetypal politician.
How things have changed. Jenrick is now by far the most energetic member of the shadow Cabinet, producing slick social media videos of him expounding on an issue while walking with real purpose, and managing to create many more attack headlines for the Conservative Party than its real leader.
Often, Kemi Badenoch spends her time clarifying what she meant and getting annoyed with journalists who have the temerity to quote her accurately. Jenrick – or perhaps the team around him – has much more of a knack of spotting a hot button issue and turning it into a story to exploit.
This week, though, it was Jenrick having to clarify what he had meant after some semi-private comments about the need for some kind of alliance with Reform UK made their way to a journalist. He insisted, not very convincingly, that he and Badenoch were on the same page, adding: “The party’s under new leadership under Kemi. Frankly, I think she’s doing a bloody good job in difficult circumstances. You know, it’s not easy being leader of the opposition when we’ve just lost our worst ever election defeat. Frankly, I think people should give her a break.”
It’s the kind of faux-supportive statement that a strong leader doesn’t need made about them, thus highlighting how weak Badenoch currently is.
She has had a reasonably good week in that she has been able to complete a victory lap on her stance on sex and gender following the Supreme Court ruling. Attacking Keir Starmer on his own wandering confusion over the definition of a woman at Prime Minister’s Questions also allowed Badenoch to avoid having to make the session about the local elections, which are likely to be uncomfortable for the Tories. Next week might not be quite so enjoyable for the Conservative leader.
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My friend Robert Jenrick needs to stop trying to be Boris Johnson
Read MoreAnd yet while the mood in the Tory party isn’t exactly euphoric at the moment, there is little sense that a particularly bad set of local elections results will be what tips Badenoch into crisis territory. Most Tory MPs are of the view that another change of leader would make them look ridiculous, with one saying: “She’s not been great, but equally, she’s not done anything terrible yet.”
The problem, though, is that while Badenoch isn’t growing in authority, Jenrick is. He seems a less improbable candidate than he did in the contest, and the amount of attention he is managing to generate is destabilising for Badenoch. This is not entirely her fault, though, or indeed fully down to Jenrick improving his shtick.
He is also benefitting by default from the majority of the Conservative shadow Cabinet being so low wattage that it often appears to be in its own energy blackout. Some of those shadow Cabinet members complain privately to friends that they don’t have the chance to say very much as Badenoch isn’t giving them any policy to talk about, and that Jenrick is doing well because he has decided to freelance, often straying far from his brief as shadow justice secretary.
The policy vacuum is a deliberate one: there are few things that seem to annoy Badenoch more at the moment than the suggestion she hasn’t set out enough policy. She always argues with interviewers that now isn’t the time to be setting out detailed positions while the party is still working out what it stands for.
There is logic behind that, but it does mean that the Tory party ends up making policy in a piecemeal fashion as it responds to government announcements and tries to find something to say.
There is also frustration that Badenoch hasn’t offered much progress on that bigger question of what the Conservatives do stand for – and what she wants to repudiate. Often at Prime Minister’s Questions and in set-piece Commons events she ends up defending the record of the last Conservative government, but hasn’t yet said what the “under new leadership” claim that she makes means in terms of repudiating the mistakes.
Jenrick would probably find it just as hard to explain how he would do things differently, not least because as Robert Generic, he was a minister in that government too. But at the moment, he has the benefit of not having to do the difficult work while continuing to pump out those social media videos. He might want others to give Badenoch a break, but he’s unlikely to follow that advice himself.
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