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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The Conservative Party is in better health today than it was yesterday because it no longer includes Robert Jenrick, who has been sacked as shadow justice secretary and had his membership suspended. A man whose pronouncements on race and skin colour would have seen him ejected from the Conservative front bench by any leader from Edward Heath to Rishi Sunak is no longer in it. This is progress for anyone who hopes for a return to the moderate, centre-right sort of Tory party that can survive and thrive.
But the circumstances of his sacking are not because party leader Kemi Badenoch has belatedly noticed the content of Jenrick’s character. Instead, she says, she was presented with “irrefutable” evidence that he was plotting to defect to Nigel Farage’s Reform, and in a way calculated to do maximum damage to the Conservatives.
This is, by Badenoch’s own account, a “You’re not dumping me, I’m dumping you” type of sacking. That sort of thing never reflects well on the person saying it, but on this occasion it does rescue a bit of Conservative dignity by denying Farage a moment of Westminster theatre. The best time to remove Jenrick from the Conservative Party was in autumn last year. But the second-best time is now, and this week could yet represent the moment in which the Conservatives finally wised up to the nature of the threat they face from their rivals on the right.
Farage has never kept his desire to destroy the Tory party a secret. Yet too many Conservatives have a sentimental view of Reform as a long-lost family member, whose politicians should be talked about as sadly estranged children, rather than opponents who stand against or have equivocated on many of the Conservative Party’s proudest achievements, from free trade to Britain’s support for Ukraine.
When the Tory machine stirs itself to attack Reform, it tends to do so in the tone of a wounded lover. Thus the response among Badenoch’s allies to Jenrick’s suspected defection (and indeed to Nadhim Zahawi’s actual defection earlier this week) has been one of hurt betrayal, rather than making the argument as to why a strong Conservative Party is better for the UK than Reform.
Badenoch now has that opportunity. Her improved performances at PMQs, and Labour’s continued slide down the opinion polls, have made her stronger internally than she once was. She can now set out a path for her party that is distinct and different from both Reform and from a Labour government. She can reclaim the ground on which the Tory party has traditionally fought and won elections.
Still, the exit of Jenrick from the Conservative family does pose a threat as well as an opportunity. Many of her parliamentary allies are not natural “Badenochites” but have been clinging to her leadership for fear that Jenrick was her inevitable successor. Without that fear, Badenoch will now have to prove that she has a plan for the Tory party to become something other than Reform’s caustic echo.