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When then-prime minister Boris Johnson deprived Robert Jenrick of his cabinet rank in September 2021, still months before the latter’s 40th birthday, the outgoing housing secretary wasn’t even the most high-profile mover. Jenrick’s ouster was overshadowed, commentators concluded instinctively, both by the high-profile exit of education secretary Gavin Williamson and fraught demotion of foreign secretary Dominic Raab — not to mention the promotions of Nadhim Zahawi and Liz Truss in their respective steads.
The Sunday Times’ chief political commentator, Tim Shipman, featured scant reference to Jenrick’s sacking in his account of the reshuffle. The single section in question, borne of a quote attributed to “a Johnson aide”, noted Jenrick would have been jettisoned far sooner had reports that he assisted media tycoon Richard Desmond with a planning application (after sitting next to him at a fundraising dinner) not coincided with Dominic Cummings’ lockdown-busting trip to Barnard Castle.
Jenrick’s stay at the apex of politics had been short, therefore — and far from sweet. His contribution to the Conservative Party, as a Cameroon enabler-turned-enforcer of Johnson’s premiership, had seemingly ended. Having once featured in the triumvirate that famously “backed Boris” as Tory leader in an article for The Times, Jenrick’s star — weighed by scandalous baggage — refused to rise further. What is more, that the curiously tedious Robert Generic did “not lodge himself in the memory”, as a 2020 Conservative Home profile savagely put it, augured poorly for his ability to bounce back.
But here we are, five years later, and Jenrick has just finished in pole position after the first round of MP voting in the 2024 Conservative leadership contest. Over recent years, the whiplash politics of the Conservative Party’s ministerial revolving door has inspired more than a few improbable second winds. But the steady return to prominence of Jenrick, first as immigration minister under Sunak and now as de facto leadership frontrunner, utterly eclipses the Tories’ other psychodramatic accidents.
In the vote on Wednesday, Jenrick received the support of 28 colleagues, pipping Kemi Badenoch (22) to first place. Former home secretary Priti Patel, viewed by many as a future leader at the time of Jenrick’s sacking in 2021, was eliminated with 14. The five leadership survivors — including moderate tributes Mel Stride, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly — will now face a second vote on Tuesday next week.
This said, Jenrick’s lead at the front of the pack is far from insurmountable. Although he won the support of the greatest number of participating 118 MPs, he failed to gain over 25 per cent of the vote (29.5). The full result points to widespread confusion in Conservative ranks over how to respond to the party’s recent routing — with MPs, manifestly, unconvinced by any single candidate’s pitch. No contender, simply, has provided compelling enough answers to the existential questions begged of the Conservative Party earlier this year to establish a meaningful lead.
Still, that Jenrick finished first in the inaugural voting round is undoubtedly significant — both in terms of what it says about the candidates’ political trajectories and its implications for the “vibes” of the race. Badenoch, in the end, has been stripped of her status as heir apparent to the Tory throne for the first time in months. The shadow levelling up secretary’s claim, faced with an insurgent rival, suddenly looks precarious in a way it hasn’t since Sunak emerged as Conservative leader in 2022. Indeed, given the momentum James Cleverly acquired this week — beating expectations to his 21 MP total (one short of second place) — Badenoch’s spot in the final two is far from guaranteed.
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The rise of Robert Jenrick
The political development of Robert Jenrick — from Sunak lackey to Conservative right champion — has been considered by bewildered commentators for some time now, but only recently as a potentially winning leadership race strategy.
Indeed, in terms of advancing his political interests, Jenrick’s decision to resign as immigration minister on 6 December 2023 seems remarkably well thought through. At the time, Jenrick argued that the Safety of Rwanda Bill — composed in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the scheme at large — was not only not hardline enough, but that the government risked deepening public distrust in insisting it was.
“I refuse to be yet another politician who makes promises on immigration to the British public but does not keep them”, the outgoing Home Office minister argued. In other words: the Rwanda bill (later Act) will not work, cannot work and the government is risking electoral armageddon in insisting it might. In forging this narrative, Jenrick won the right to tell a story about the coming Conservative routing and how he — had he been given the opportunity — could have thwarted it (especially with regard to the Reform peril).
On these terms, Jenrick went on to assume a prominent place among the PM’s rebels, spearheading amendments to the legislation and even voting against it at third reading as one of eleven “New Spartan” naysayers. In hindsight, Jenrick’s decision-making through this period — from resignation to rebellion — bolstered and ultimately secured his position in the Conservative Party as a rising right-wing champion.
As such, Jenrick’s schemes, viewed through the prism of self-interest, seem genuinely farsighted — and actioned during a period when both ministers and their factional antagonists pursued mainly myopic strategies in search of ephemeral ends.
By resigning, Jenrick walked away not only from the government’s perceived policy failures (on migration and more) but the reputational damage inflicted by the hurtling electoral cataclysm. As The Financial Times’ Stephen Bush has noted, Jenrick is a unique politician in that he did not back Liz Truss’ failed premiership in late 2022 and “nor was he still in the bunker with Rishi Sunak when he led the party to a crushing defeat two years later”.
On top of this, in exiting government and assuming the role as de facto lead spokesperson for Sunak’s “awkward squad”, Jenrick effectively destroyed Suella Braverman’s campaign for the Tory leadership. The ex-home secretary had been sacked with much rhapsody weeks prior to Jenrick’s resignation; but released from the shackles of collective responsibility, Jenrick was able to court support among Braverman’s backers — first, as the star of Sunak’s Rwanda plan rebellion and latterly as a relentless commentator for The Daily Telegraph, for whom he has written numerous articles this year. Jenrick’s public contributions for the paper read as no less than a new prospectus for his party. And one compiled well in advance of Sunak’s shock election.
Over the latter stages of the last parliament, therefore, Jenrick was able to forge relationships with key Conservative right movers and shakers — those whose institutional and intellectual influence, he reflected, could bolster his standing in a leadership contest to come.
News of the Conservative contest schedule in August thus quickly coincided with reports that erstwhile Braverman allies were abandoning her campaign for Jenrick’s proposition. Danny Kruger, the co-chair of the New Conservatives clique — with whom Jenrick worked closely on the Rwanda bill, left Braverman to lead her new rival’s campaign. Sir John Hayes was another notable defector — having worked up a reputation in the last parliament as not only a Braverman ally, but her prime patron and mentor.
Over recent days, Jenrick has also won the backing of Conservative MP Neil O’Brien, with whom he co-authored a report for the Centre for Policy Studies think tank on migration policy earlier this year. O’Brien’s was a symbolic endorsement, with the former minister having been once considered as one of Badenoch’s inner circle of rising star Tories. O’Brien had backed Badenoch in the 2022 Conservative leadership race and “co-resigned” alongside her and fellow allies from Johnson’s ailing government.
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Badenoch vs. Jenrick: the fight on the right
O’Brien’s endorsement brings the Badenoch vs. Jenrick sub-plot — the fight on the right —further into focus. Both contenders, it is well noted, are competing among the same constituency of MPs; but at this juncture, the former immigration minister is leading in the two measures that matter: MP support — both publicly declared (17 vs 15) and as reflected in the first round’s secret ballot vote (28 vs 22), plus in the more subjective, vibes-based measure of “momentum”.
Jenrick has therefore deprived Badenoch of her frontrunner status and he has done so, crucially, by subtly eschewing her unique mode of combative politics. Jenrick’s more congenial, mild-mannered style reflects a significant difference in strategy to the firebrand demeanour of Badenoch. The former business secretary’s strengths do not lie in courting support behind the scenes rather, but in the fiery cauldron of political conflict — an asset arguably neutralised somewhat by the contest’s “yellow card” system or, even, the basic dynamics of this somewhat circumspect “blue-on-blue” contest.
Badenoch’s appeal is to those who desire not merely election victory, ephemeral as that can prove, but advances in the wider “culture war”. Jenrick, meanwhile, has opted this contest to show that his affinity with the right-wing cause runs deeper than his willingness to profess and condemn cultural tropes. Indeed, he recently expressed pointedly that his party should not “go down a rabbit hole of culture wars”, implying that this assertive Conservatism can blind MPs and activists to the electorate’s wishes. “People are concerned about the cost of living, housing, public services, immigration, and I wanted to be spending most of my time on those things”, Jenrick told an event for young Conservatives, according to a recording leaked to The Times newspaper.
Jenrick’s general strategy, as acted on over months, has been to restyle himself as a trenchant but steadily competent right-winger, a politician whose principles mirror those of the Conservative selectorate, but who also exudes administrative nous. Tory MPs and the wider membership, especially those of the party right, surely accept that these traits were lacking in recent champions (Johnson, Truss, Sunak) — and are therefore needed to revivify the party cause.
In any case, it works to Jenrick’s advantage that his style makes him harder to depict as extreme than some of his rivals, as well as other right-wing bogeymen such as Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman.
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What next for the Conservative leadership contest?
At this juncture, the key question animating the Conservative leadership contest is where Patel’s 16 votes go in the next round. Her supporters are largely on the right of the party and thus could head to either Jenrick and Badenoch camps in some complicated, inscrutable combination.
In order to reclaim her frontrunner status, however, Badenoch would need to pick up at least half of Patel’s number (7), all else being equal. As such, given Patel’s support could split in all manner of directions (she actually undertook to diversify her appeal this contest), it seems probable that Jenrick will remain in poll position after the next round of voting.
That matters. For contenders will then address the Conservative membership at party conference through hustings and fringe events — forums where having “momentum” will engender greater buzz around one’s candidacy, attracting activist and media attention.
Moreover, according to YouGov, Jenrick is just the 33rd best-known Conservative in the country — below, curiously, Lord (Jo) Johnson, Lord (Norman) Tebbit and Lord (Norman) Lamont. He will therefore need to introduce himself to a wider audience than the Conservative membership at conference, if his star is to continue to rise through the contest’s latter stretches.
And there exist further possible roadblocks that could emerge as Jenrick’s campaign develops. At this stage, the former immigration minister has likely benefitted from a determined “anybody but Kemi” campaign among MPs who have, over time, fallen foul of Badenoch’s abrasive approach. But in a sign of how fraught inter-personnel and -factional relationships are within the Conservative Party, gains here could be foiled by an upstart “anybody but Jenrick” campaign, championed by those who remain loyal to Sunak and viewed their ex-ally as a destabilising force last parliament.
Similarly, Jenrick’s attempt to corner the right-wing vote among MPs and look beyond the horizon to the membership vote, has landed him in some uncomfortable positions. Among some MPs and activists, for instance, Jenrick’s enthusiastic endorsement of Donald Trump will prove a straightforward disqualifier. Certainly, this will be a position that invites further scrutiny over the coming weeks, as both the US presidential election and Tory leadership contest approach their terminus points at the beginning of November (only within three days of each other bizarrely).
Robert Jenrick’s strategic Conservatism
All that said, there is no ignoring the fact that Jenrick’s journey from discarded cabinet minister to leadership frontrunner speaks to a cunning ruthlessness on his part — a strategic savvy, even, that reflects the rise to prominence and then power of Keir Starmer. Ambition, of course, is not a characteristic in short supply in Conservative circles — but Jenrick’s genuine farsightedness, equally undeniably, is.
There’s little doubt that the biggest tests are to come this contest — the outcomes of which could even deny Jenrick a spot in the final two. But Jenrick’s strategy to put himself in this position, inaugurated upon his resignation in December 2023, speaks to a shrewdness that Conservative politics has proved utterly desolate of over recent years. That, in and of itself, is a factor well worthy of consideration for Tories who covet a return to government sooner rather than later.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on X/Twitter here.
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