Robert Jenrick has been handed a scathing attack by a former Tory MP following his sacking today, declaring “good riddance!”
Speaking to GB News, Sir Alan Duncan hit out at the ex-Shadow Justice Secretary for his alleged defection plot and said he is now “left stranded with no party”.
Taking to social media to announce his sacking, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch confirmed she has received “irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect”.
She said: “I have sacked Robert Jenrick from the Shadow Cabinet, removed the whip and suspended his party membership with immediate effect.
“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.”
Reacting to Mr Jenrick’s departure, Sir Alan told GB News: “I think this is very good news, and good riddance. I think he’s only been in it for himself. I think what people don’t realise is quite how unpopular Robert Jenrick is.
“Actually one of the reasons I think that Kemi Badenoch won the leadership so decisively is that her vote was reinforced by the fact that her opponent was Robert Jenrick.”
He added: “He has a very, very hard edge, which I think does not help the Conservative Party’s reputation and image. And I think that my point about him being self seeking and in it for himself has been proved today.”
Ex-Tory MP Alan Duncan has hit out at Robert Jenrick after being sacked by Kemi Badenoch
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PA / GB NEWS
“He’s really played his cards very, very badly. He’s been rumbled, he’s been found out and I think Kemi Babenoch has quite rightly taken the opportunity to push him out the door and it’s brings great credit to her and I think will do an enormous amount of good for her reputation as being decisive and having the qualities of a leader.”
Asked by host Tom Harwood if his celebrations are down to the Tory party becoming “less right wing”, Sir Alan responded: “I think the word ‘left’ isn’t really appropriate on the spectrum of the Conservative Party itself. But if I were to take you on the terms you asked your question, I say that the answer is yes, because I think that competing with Reform does not help the Conservative Party.
“And I think that actually Robert Jenrick did personify a lot of the nasty side, which really doesn’t move us forward at all. I think the Conservative Party needs to talk about a lot more of an immigration, it has to talk about the economy, what is a good and a bad tax system. We have to talk about social deprivation. If you want to call that left, you can call it left. But that’s the country we aspire to govern.”
He continued: “We have to understand and address the issues of the country we aspire to govern, and I don’t think Robert Jenrick did. I think what we’ll now see is that he is likely to join Reform, because in his press conference Nigel Farage was quite deft, quite nimble.
KEMI BADENOCH / X
“Otherwise Robert Jenrick is beached, he’s left stranded with no party and therefore no future, and his self-interest I think will probably now push him to join Reform.”
Noting that the Reform party is increasingly being filled with former Conservatives, Sir Alan told GB News: “I think that begs the question of whether we’ve seen peak Nigel Farage or not. I think there’s of course more mileage in them, but they’re spread quite thinly across the country. So how that converts into parliamentary seats is a very, very big political question.
“But a lot of sort of dejected Conservatives, dejected it was seen for their own interests rather than anything broader, have joined Reform. A lot of them do seem quite maverick. I think that the Nadhim Zahawi defection earlier this week does not look convincing, because that does look like blatant brazen self-interest.
“And so I think that collection of people, it does build a sort of collective identity for Reform that’s not really very politically attractive. It looks like it’s individuals who are looking after themselves rather than a movement that is addressing all the interests of the country.”
Mr Duncan told GB News that most Tory defections to Reform appear more in ‘their self-interest’ than the interests of the country
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GB NEWS
Calling on Mrs Badenoch and the Conservatives to “persuade Britons” that they still adopt a “broad agenda”, Sir Alan concluded: “The great thing about the Conservative Party over centuries, certainly many decades, is that it has a massively effective power regeneration.
“But what I would argue is the needs to come from a broader understanding of the need to present intellectual foundations to what it is to be a Conservative. You always need to persuade every new generation of what it is to be a Conservative. The sort of things that I was learning 50 years ago in the run up to Margaret Thatcher, we need to do that all over again.
“And I don’t think we’ve quite really got stuck into that process, because we’ve inevitably been drawn into the challenge of there being a split on the right of Conservative politics, which means you’ve got to address the sort of things that you were just talking about because that’s the daily news diet.
“But we’ve got to try and push it off that short term daily news diet into persuading people that we have a broad agenda for all people across the whole United Kingdom. That is what can equip a future Government properly to govern.”