Robert Jenrick has launched a scathing attack on the Conservative Party, claiming the current Chief Whip once told him there was a “special place in hell” for arguing that foreign aid should be redirected towards defence spending.
Speaking to GB News, the Reform MP said the exchange convinced him the party has failed to learn from its time in Government and remains unwilling to confront its mistakes on immigration, the economy and national security.
Until his dramatic expulsion from the Conservative Party last Thursday, Robert Jenrick had been serving as Shadow Justice Secretary and had spent more than 11 years as a Tory MP.
Party leader Kemi Badenoch said she dismissed Mr Jenrick after discovering he was plotting a defection “in a way designed to be as damaging as possible” to the Conservatives.
Speaking to Patrick Christys on GB News this evening, Mr Jenrick said: “After the last general election, I went straight out and said the Conservative Party had failed in government on immigration, the economy and public services and that it needed to be painfully honest about the mistakes it had made.
“That was the first step towards regaining people’s trust. Here we are almost two years later and, with some honourable exceptions, I do not believe the Conservative Party is sorry for those mistakes.
“Broadly speaking, it is the same cast of characters sitting around the top table, the very people who made those errors.
“Time and again I’ve seen an inability to internalise the fact that the party let the country down. And if you won’t even accept that, why on earth should the public trust you to run the country again?
Robert Jenrick has launched a scathing attack on the Conservative Party
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GB NEWS
“Take the European Convention on Human Rights. Kemi Badenoch now says she would leave it, and I think she believes that but I don’t think many others do.
“When I stood for the leadership, people around the shadow cabinet table told me they would never serve under someone who wanted to leave the ECHR. Jesse Norman even went on Twitter to say it was mendacious and wrong.
“On other issues, I remember writing a perfectly reasonable article arguing that some of the foreign aid budget should be redirected to defence to support our armed forces, a policy now backed by both Keir Starmer and the Conservatives.
“One of the whips, who is now the Chief Whip, messaged me to say I was ‘totally out of order’ and that there was a ‘special place in hell’ for people who made arguments like that.
Robert Jenrick has launched a scathing attack on the Conservative Party
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PA
“I simply do not believe that people who said things like that only months ago have undergone some miraculous conversion.
“Look at what happened over Christmas. We were all appalled that El-Fattah, an Egyptian extremist, had been brought into the country, yet the Prime Minister was celebrating it online as a triumph of British diplomacy.
“I went on GB News and social media to say this was a disgrace and that he should be deported as quickly as possible.
“To my surprise, senior figures within the Conservative Party complained that I shouldn’t say that because it drew attention to the fact that the last Conservative government had given him a British passport. They wanted me to ‘pipe down’.
“I could give many more examples, but the point is this: if the party isn’t sorry and can’t accept the mistakes it made, it is a prisoner of its past.
“And if it can’t confront issues like this, whether El-Fattah, Chagos or others, it will never regain the trust of the British public.”
GB News have contacted the Tories for comment.