Some disparate thoughts on Badenoch vs Jenrick

Let's just start by recognising that this is very funny.

Around midday, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch sacked shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick. She released a statement saying: “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.”

Some thoughts below.

I mean first up, just to be clear, this is very funny. Don’t try to make it serious. It isn’t. There is no gravity to the situation whatsoever. Before it happened, Reform were leading in the polls, the Tories were screwed and the country was going to the dogs. After it happened, those three conditions were unchanged. Nothing of any consequence has taken place, except that we all got to laugh at some of the worst figures to ever sit on the green benches.

Watching Jenrick engage in Westminster scheming is like observing Tom hatch some kind of fiendish plan against Jerry. He is so obvious, so utterly transparent, that you can interpret every move before he even makes it. This seems to have reached a climax with his barely concealed plan to ditch the Tories and join Reform.

“Apparently aides close to Jenrick were ‘very indiscreet’ and left around incriminating evidence including a speech,” Guardian reporter Jessica Elgot said. Yes that’s right, including a speech. That’s what it takes to uncover a Jenrick plot. You just pick up the defection speech he’s going to give off a fucking table. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy it is not.

Then there’s this, from BBC political correspondent Henry Zeffman: “One MP I’ve just spoken to, who was generally aligned with Robert Jenrick, was adamant that Jenrick had merely been keeping his options open when it came to Reform. They said his preferred option was to wait for the elections in May, and then see if there was a possibility of him becoming Conservative leader first.” This piece of gold-plated rhetoric is apparently the Jenrick defence. Amazingly, it is more damning than the attack from Tory HQ, because it suggests he wanted to hang around and see if he could become leader before defecting, but then decided he could not. It really takes some skill to construct an excuse so feeble it makes your murderers look like character witnesses.

There is a chance here for the Tories to decontaminate, but they will not take it. It’s right there waiting for them. You have gotten rid of the most poisonous little man. You can attempt to reach out to voters who have no home, good solid old-fashioned conservatives who want a cautious fiscal approach and aren’t charmed by jackboots.

There are little glimmers of movement in that direction. A couple days back shadow chancellor Mel Stride confirmed the Tories would protect the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR). It was a reminder of when this was a better, sounder, more sensible party.

The trouble is that Badenoch is fundamentally not a sensible person. This is not a political problem so much as a personal one. She’s just a very foolish woman indeed, and tempted by off-the-cuff radical propositions. The obvious moral, electoral path here - to drag the party back to the centre-right, let all the looneys join Reform, and stake a claim in an attractive and uncontested political space - is quite beyond her.

The early reports are that Nick Timothy - Rasputin-for-cunts - will take Jenrick’s place. That is essentially a pledge of more of the same.

That being said, it would be churlish to deny the Tory leader any praise. Badenoch did well today. Her statement absolutely fucked Jenrick, who now looks even more inept and pitiable than he did before. It also ruined Farage’s day and turned what should have been a moment of asteroid-strike political import into a shambolic half-arsed clusterfuck. You’ve got to hand it to her. She is a woman who does not have many good days, on account of her comprehensive lack of qualities. But today, she had a good day.

But let’s not pretend, however, that Badenoch is actually any good. If there is a serious side-effect to today’s events it’s that it will contribute to the growing idea that we should take Badenoch seriously.

I know. This argument is too absurd for any sensible person to hold. But remember this is Westminster - there really aren’t that many sensible people around and even those who are are easily bored. After a year of saying Kemi-is-shit they are in the market for saying Kemi-is-good-actually because it is a more interesting position to hold.

You can see this trend most clearly in the Spectator coverage. “Amazing that Kemi has the biggest set of balls of any politician at the moment,” an anonymous Tory admirer tells the magazine. “It could be a real defining moment for her - her ‘Thatcher’ moment.” These people are so stupid it’s a wonder they can cross the road safely. Elsewhere in the magazine, Stephen Pollard writes: “The most important thing about Robert Jenrick’s sacking isn’t Robert Jenrick. It’s that it is yet another demonstration of Kemi Badenoch’s increasing stature as Tory leader.”

Just to be clear, sacking someone who has been on leadership maneuvers the entire time you’ve been in charge at the exact moment they are going to leave is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of weakness. It demonstrates that you would have put up with anything as long as they stayed, that there was no behaviour so disloyal you would not have tolerated it if they happened to remain a party member.

Morally, the same point applies but with more force. Over the last 12 months, Jenrick has dragged British politics into the gutter. Last January he spoke about people from “medieval cultures”. Should’ve been sacked for it. Wasn’t. In October he made a series of comments about race and integration . Should’ve been sacked for it. Wasn’t. Instead, Badenoch defended him.

Doing so degraded her. His comments on integration necessarily entailed that a non-white person could never integrate. And yet she supported them, participating in her own political delegitimisation. Even worse, her acceptance of these remarks showed that there was no limit to what could be said in the political mainstream. It poisoned our culture.

If Badenoch was truly brave, she would have sacked Jenrick back then. She isn’t, so she didn’t.

This growing confidence in Badenoch is a disaster for both the Tories and Labour. A new leader - a serious personality - is required for the Tories to recover and claw back some of that Reform support. It would drag the party back from extinction, which would be good for them. Labour would benefit too, because the right would fail to coalesce around Reform. And the country would benefit by starting the long painful process of detoxifying the political right. It’s in almost everyone’s interests, but this counter-intuitive Kemi-might-be-alright-actually craze is a hindrance to it.

Still, let’s not get carried away. Today is not a day for strategy or predictions. It is a day for wild abandon and merry jubilation. Some of the worst people in Britain are having a very bad time. And it’s not often that we get to say that anymore.