Jenrick’s sacking is both threat and opportunity for Badenoch

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The Conservative Party is healthier today than it was yesterday because it no longer includes Robert Jenrick, who was sacked and suspended as shadow justice secretary. The man whose comments on race and skin color would have resulted in any leader from Edward Heath to Rishi Sunak being ousted from the Tory front bench is no longer in it. This is progress for anyone hoping to return to a moderate, center-right Conservative Party that can survive and thrive.

But the circumstances of his dismissal are not because party leader Kemi Badenoch belatedly noticed the content of Jenrick’s character. Instead, it says, it provided “overwhelming” evidence that he was planning to defect from Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, in a way calculated to cause maximum damage to the Conservatives.

This, according to Badenoch, is a kind of dismissal: “You’re not getting rid of me, I’m getting rid of you.” This sort of thing never reflects well on the person saying it, but on this occasion he salvages a little Tory dignity by denying Farage his Westminster stage moment. The best time to remove Jenrick from the Conservative Party was in the autumn of last year. But the second best time is now, and this week may mark the moment when conservatives finally wake up to the nature of the threat they face from their rivals on the right.

Farage has never kept his desire to destroy the Conservative Party secret. However, many Conservatives have a sentimental view of Reform as a long-lost individual whose politicians should be spoken of as sadly alienated children, not as opponents who stand against or object to many of the Conservative Party’s proudest achievements, from free trade to Britain’s support for Ukraine.

When the conservative machine moves itself to attack reform, it tends to do so with the tone of a wounded lover. Thus the reaction of Badenoch’s allies to Jenrick’s suspected defection (and indeed to Nadhim Zahawi’s actual defection earlier this week) was one of painful betrayal, rather than making the case for why a strong Conservative Party would be better for the UK than reform.

And now Badenoch has that opportunity. Its improved performance in the PMQs, and Labor’s continued decline in the polls, have made it stronger internally than it was before. She can now chart a path for her party that is distinct and different from the Reform government and the Labor Party government. It can reclaim the ground on which the Conservative Party has traditionally fought and won elections.

However, Jenrick’s departure from the Conservative family poses both a threat and an opportunity. Many of her parliamentary allies are not natural “Badenochs”, but they have stuck to her leadership for fear that Jenrick will be her inevitable successor. Without this fear, Badenoch will now have to prove that she has a plan to transform the Conservative Party into something other than the caustic echo of reform.

stephen.bush@ft.com