On Thursday, a gleeful Nigel Farage thanked the Conservatives for handing him “on a plate” the man he called their “most popular figure”, as he told Tory MPs to follow Robert Jenrick’s lead by defecting to Reform UK.
In switching allegiances, Jenrick is helping to reshape British politics, redrawing the battle lines over who will lead the right into the next general election.
Farage has demonstrated that even Tories who served in the former Conservative government he derides — and those with towering ambitions — are welcome in his party, giving them a deadline of the local elections on May 7 to jump ship.
The move has led many to question whether Jenrick’s arrival will ultimately be a help or a hindrance to Farage, given there are potential pitfalls to Reform being a receptacle for disillusioned Tories, especially if they are seen to be relics of failed Conservative governments.
The Reform leader will also have to work side by side with someone who has made no secret of his desire to one day run the country.
Speaking to GB News on Thursday, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: “All I would say to Nigel is, Rob’s not my problem anymore, he’s your problem now.”
One Reform insider noted that the defection of former Tory cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi earlier this week “went down so badly with the rank and file”.
They added that there was a groundswell of people demanding that Farage send a signal that his party was not simply the “Tories 2.0, ragtag edition”. Zahawi was sacked as Conservative chair in 2023 over his tax affairs.
As immigration minister, Jenrick once boasted of his expansion of the use of hotels to house asylum seekers, a policy which has become a lightning rod for protest over the UK’s immigration and asylum system. Farage last year called Jenrick “a fraud”.
A significant Reform donor described Jenrick on Thursday as an “opportunist”, adding that he simply spied a “better opportunity for his political ambitions” in Farage’s populist party than with the Conservatives under Badenoch.
But his defection could nonetheless lend some credibility to Reform, and potentially act as the catalyst that turns a trickle of Tory defections into the flood that Farage has heralded for many months.
Tim Bale, a biographer of the Conservative Party, said losing Jenrick was a blow but “survivable” for the Tories, as long as it does not break the dam.
“So far, the defections have been little more than a trickle of fairly inconsequential figures — a full-scale flood involving MPs (or even former MPs) who really matter would be genuinely existential for the Conservative Party,” Bale said.
For Badenoch, who has spent the last few months mounting a rearguard action against Reform’s surge in the polls, the hope is that her decisiveness in sacking her internal rival will strengthen her standing with both party members and the public.
Some Tory MPs hope it will also steer her away from trying to mimic Reform, and refocus her attention instead on winning back voters attracted to traditional Conservative messages on the economy.
Former Tory chancellor George Osborne said on Thursday the Conservatives were now at a tipping point, and Jenrick’s departure was “the proper beginning of the civil war” about who will lead the right of British politics and what Tory MPs would do next.
“Are they going to defect to Reform? Is the pressure going to grow to have an alliance with Reform? Or are they going to say, look, the Jenricks of this world can leave, but we think the future lies with the Tory party.”
One potential danger for Farage is that the influx of former cabinet Tory ministers may chafe at the idea that Reform is a one-man band.
Until his sacking by Badenoch, Jenrick was in a strong position to negotiate with Farage on any future role in Reform. The post of Reform shadow chancellor, also coveted by Reform heavyweights Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice, was an obvious prize.
Farage has frequently fallen out with people in his party who have challenged his authority. But if the Reform leader wants to present himself as a prime minister-in-waiting, he will need to build a serious team around him.
“Until the May elections it’s fine for us to be a campaigning party,” said one senior Reform figure, arguing that much of Reform’s appeal came down to its “piratical” swagger. “But after that we will need to start preparing for government. At some point there will have to be a shadow cabinet.”
Decision-making, currently held tightly by Farage, will have to be more widely shared. Farage said on Thursday that he wanted a few people “who have experience of what it’s like to live, breathe and work on the front line”.
Ben Habib, former co-leader of Reform who resigned from the party in 2024, questioned why Farage had gone to such great lengths “just to recreate the Tory party”.
“Farage won’t be able to bear other people sharing the limelight. None of this is going to end well for any of the new recruits.”
For now, some Tory MPs seemed genuinely pleased that Jenrick was gone. “His shadow leadership campaign was starting to piss off other MPs,” one Tory adviser said, describing Jenrick as a “political chameleon” who would “say anything for power”.
“He was doing stuff that was outside his purview and treading on people’s toes.”
David Gauke, a former Tory Treasury minister, said Jenrick has “long been an unexploded bomb waiting to go off, and now he has done so, doing much less damage than might have been expected”.
But he argued that now should be “a clarifying moment” for the Conservatives. “It has no future if it wants to be a party of the populist right but there is plenty of space as a centre-right party focused on economic growth and fiscal responsibility.”