Just over a month ago Robert Jenrick was running through Newark dressed in a Santa hat with the man he credits with masterminding his re-election to the constituency as the Conservative candidate in 2024.
A few weeks on, and Sam Smith, 29, a local Conservative councillor who has worked closely with Jenrick for five years, says the charity run in December is just a distant memory.
What is left is “sadness” and even “betrayal” over Jenrick’s decision to defect to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, a move that rocked the right of UK politics on Thursday.
“He obviously tried to explain his reasoning,” Smith said of a phone call he received from Jenrick on Thursday night. “It’s funny how people’s views change with the polls, isn’t it?”
Smith’s sense of betrayal is not uncommon among Conservatives, and suggests the flinty question of whether Jenrick’s long-stated aim to “unite the right” is actually further away than ever, given the trail of devastation he has left with one-time colleagues and friends.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader who was quick to defenestrate Jenrick after discovering his plot to defect, on Friday ruled out ever joining a pact with Reform, saying she could not do business with “liars”.
She has said that Jenrick was not just plotting to defect but was planning to do so at a time designed to inflict maximum damage on the Conservative Party, which until recently he had one day hoped to lead.
If Badenoch sticks to her word, it means the next election could be the first truly multi-party race in decades in the UK, with questions over whether a split in the vote on the right of UK politics could allow Labour — or a more progressive coalition — to keep Farage’s populist Reform UK out.
Tim Montgomerie, the man who in September first got Jenrick to consider jumping ship, said he had warned him that he would lose many friends in the Conservative Party.
“An enormous amount of shit is going to be poured on to him by everybody,” Montgomerie told the FT, in his first public comments since Thursday’s events.
Montgomerie, a prominent former Tory commentator who left the party for Reform in December 2024, claimed that Jenrick’s main motivation was to “stop the re-election of Labour” which he says is the “question that everyone on the right needs to wrestle with this Parliament”.
But he believes Reform can largely do that on their own.
“We’ve taken on one of the big criticisms of Reform, which is that it’s a one-man band, by taking someone who ran for the Tory leadership,” Montgomerie said.
Some of Jenrick’s advisers are convinced the Tory party is all but dead, suggesting his idea of unity is more of a takeover than a merger.
Jenrick, for his part, told ITV News on Friday that he believes that “if people vote for the Tory party, it’s a wasted vote”.
Some of Jenrick’s old backers are less convinced.
David Ross, the tycoon who co-founded Carphone Warehouse, backed Jenrick with £10,000 during the leadership race in 2024. But he is not about to follow.
“I’m firmly and fiercely behind Kemi,” Ross told the FT. “We need to move on from the psychodrama, and all of the donors and stakeholders I’ve spoken to over the last 24 hours agree.”
Another donor who backed Jenrick for the leadership said “there is no chance I’d follow him over to Reform”.
“I firmly believe in the need to rebuild the centre right and I don’t think you can do that around Reform,” they said. “It’s too much of a ragbag of people”.
Polling by YouGov published on Friday showed that Jenrick’s public standing has deteriorated, with unfavourable views rising sharply from 32 per cent in October to 41 per cent since his defection, with a huge swing away by voters who backed the Conservatives in 2024.
Unfavourable views have risen from 21 to 39 per cent among this cohort, moving the former shadow justice minister from a net positive to a clearly negative rating among his former base.
In Jenrick’s constituency of Newark, a small market town in the East Midlands that, fittingly, is steeped in the history of the English Civil War, some prospective voters were unimpressed with his move on Friday.
Ralph Bennett, a volunteer guide at the National Civil War Centre in the town, said that he thought Jenrick was “a snake”.
“He’s just like Trump, he just wants to be in power,” Bennett said.
Others are more understanding. Carl Tracey, a knife sharpener who runs a stall in Newark’s market square, said that he had voted Labour in 2024 but was preparing to vote Reform, and recently attended a meeting of the party.
“There’s lots of very sincere, eager people that want to do well, but are not really trained to do the jobs they’ve got in council or in local government, so they need people like Mr Jenrick,” Tracey said.
“It’s like having a football team that’s been promoted to the Premier League and they’ve got League One players . . . He’s a professional politician. They need that.”
Jenrick is planning to hold a political rally at Newark Showground on Monday evening.
Smith, the Conservative councillor, said that Jenrick should not expect to get everything his own way in Newark. He says he is gearing up to run against Jenrick at the next general election, when he hopes he can be selected as the candidate to retain the Conservative seat.
He points out that a picture of Jenrick that had adorned the top of the Conservative Association’s staircase has been swiftly removed.
“I look forward to seeing Robert on the doorsteps trying to excuse why he has betrayed the residents of Newark,” Smith said.
“If Rob’s convinced that Reform are the right thing for Newark, let’s put it to the ballot box and let’s see.”