LATIKA M BOURKE: As Nigel Farage gets another Tory MP for Reform UK, Kemi Badenoch grows in stature

British opposition leader Kemi Badenoch has spectacularly sacked her leadership rival Robert Jenrick in a move that bolsters her growing stature, but handed Nigel Farage another sitting MP for Reform UK.

Mr Jenrick lost to Ms Badenoch in the Conservatives’ post-election-loss leadership contest in 2024.

He has been agitating ever since, holding the looming local government, Welsh and Scottish elections in May as a do-or-die test for her to presumably fail.

But Ms Badenoch, after a lacklustre start, has started to impress with her performances, commanding Prime Minister’s Questions, beginning to explain her priorities for the last year (building back donor and internal support after the 2024 wipeout), and now turning her mind to public communication.

She had her priorities in the right order. One year after the Tories were booted out, ending their bouts of regicide, self-indulgence, cronyism, incompetence, backstabbing, and self-harm, nobody was in the mood to hear what they had to say.

But Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s deeply unimpressive start to government created space for British politics’ newest-but-oldest kid on the block, Nigel Farage, to flourish.

Reform has dominated the polls for the best part of the year, sending chills down the spines of the mainstream parties, that Britain was catching Europe’s populism bug.

Immigration has been Mr Farage’s constant and increasingly legitimate complaint, first during the Brexit referendum, which he helped win, thereby exiting the UK from Europe’s free movement. But when that failed to curb migration numbers, he zeroed in on illegal crossings on migrant boats from France across the English Channel.

Which is where Mr Jenrick comes in. The 44-year-old, hailed as a “Cameroon”, like David Cameron, adopted moderate centrist positions, including backing Remain.

But as the Tory base, which elects leaders, became more right-wing, he too shifted in that direction, most notably on immigration.

This led to his resignation from the Cabinet under Rishi Sunak’s prime ministership, saying laws to enable the government to send failed asylum seekers to Rwanda did not go far enough.

His political journey may have neatly aligned with his growing leadership ambitions, but they also genuinely reflect the broad shift that has taken place in the UK on illegal migration and in particular, the small boat crossings and associated costs of housing foreigners in hotels while their claims are processed.

But that does not justify his political treachery in defecting to Reform, a party he said he used to say he wanted to put out of business.

“I was presented with clear, irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect in a way designed to be as damaging as possible to his shadow Cabinet colleagues and the wider Conservative Party,” she said.

“The British public are tired of political psychodrama and so am I.

“They saw too much of it in the last government; they’re seeing too much of it in THIS government. I will not repeat those mistakes.”

The news caught Mr Farage, who wants to turn off the Conservatives’ life support and replace the party for good, on the hop. He was giving a live press conference and was quizzed on-air about where he was planning to unveil his star recruit at a second media event scheduled that afternoon.

“I was not going to be unveiling Robert Jenrick at 4.30 this afternoon … have I signed a deal with him? No. I’ll give him a ring this afternoon,” Mr Farage said.

Mr Jenrick did end up joining Mr Farage at the media conference, confirming he had not been intending to join Reform that day, but at some point.

Mr Farage joked it was the “latest Christmas present” he’d ever received as Mr Jenrick was the Tories’ most popular figure.

He hailed it as part of the “realignment” of British politics on the right. But for someone of that stature, Mr Jenrick was not given any immediate position in the party.

He also arrived on state several minutes late, leaving Mr Farage to ad-lib and promise that he hadn’t changed his mind.

When Mr Jenrick arrived, he declared his old party “rotten” and said the Conservatives had been part of the problem in breaking Britain and were not serious about fixing it, citing views shared by his ex-colleagues in a recent shadow cabinet ministerial meeting. It was a draft of that speech that was passed to Ms Badenoch’s office earlier that day that triggered her sacking.

Mr Jenrick was peppered with questions, but was not asked why he had approached Reform about joining four months ago, but decided to continue sitting in the Shadow Cabinet, enabling him to gather information on their strategy and policies he was only privy to because of his presumed loyalty.

It was an act of a traitor. And no matter how popular he was, Conservative activists hate disloyalty. They abandoned the party at the last election, after they sped through five prime ministers in nine years, for good reason.

He is 99 per cent personal ambition, 1 per cent slime.

Conservative MPs flooded social media with Mr Jenrick and Mr Farage’s past critiques of each other, including Mr Farage calling Mr Jenrick a “fraud”.

“I don’t think Nigel is the bloke you want to have running your kids’ schools or running your local hospital or... trust your savings, your pension, your small business to,” Mr Jenrick had said.

Mr Farage swells his number of sitting MPs to six, and there is no doubt that this is the highest-profile defection yet. He boasted of a Labour defection next week.

Reform has previously acquired Danny Kruger, another sitting former Tory MP, alongside Mr Jenrick, the former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, who is not in Parliament, as well as Nadine Dorries, an ally of Boris Johnson. It has bagged as a swathe of local defections as well.

But it is becoming a home base for the Tories that created the broken system and the mess, Reform says, only it can fix. It risks embodying the very insiders it attempts to shun.

Jenrick will need to prove that he can attract Reform Conservative voters that Mr Farage has not already attracted. That may be an impossible task.

As Ron DeSantis showed in his failed primary bid against Donald Trump in the US, it is impossible to succeed as a poor man’s populist when the real thing is on offer. It was always this way for Jenrick, too, which suggests the accelerated defection came from a position of weakness, not strength.

Ms Badenoch has the most unenviable job in British politics. But even her critics, including Jenrick’s allies, have been quietly impressed with her improving performance, which has been on the up since the Conservative Party conference last year. Talk of ousting her had dampened.

If Mr Jenrick truly thought he had a chance of knocking Ms Badenoch off in May, he would have held on. Maybe hedging was always his plan until Ms Badenoch busted it.

But it was clear this was not just a personality contest. Mr Jenrick has clearly determined that the path to power is populism, whether under the Conservatives’ or Reform’s cloak, was inconsequential.

But Ms Badenoch is attempting to resist the populist pull and chart a way back for the Conservatives that returns to traditional Tory values around the economy and enterprise. This was what she set out at party conference.

Alongside a strong immigration policy, her task is to attract the Tories who were fed up with the political infighting she rightly identified, and Mr Jenrick displayed, back home.

She bolstered her standing with them on Thursday with her steely ejection of Mr Jenrick.

When faced with leadership agitation, Mr Starmer’s approach has been hamfisted and only exacerbated his weakness.

By contrast, Ms Badenoch has shown a firmness, conviction and determination that will resonate well in an era of politics that favours decisiveness and plain-speaking.