This article is based on conversations at and around the Conservative South East Regional Conference Saturday 1st March.
This weekend I took a train to Henley-on-Thames. It’s a lovely place but my advice is – don’t. Take a train, that is.
Honestly, I’d have been quicker rowing there up the Thames but having been asked to attend the South East regional Conservative conference it was well worth the effort – once I got there.
The event was concluded with a really great speech by Lord Howard who deserves a mention for robustly reinforcing the responses of Kemi Badenoch, and the Prime Minister to Donald Trump and JD Vance’s disgraceful treatment of President Zelensky in the oval office.
A word or two on that, first.
There are, and you’ve read plenty of reasons why in recent articles on ConHome, why overall a Trump administration might be good for the UK, but the geopolitical consensus of the past 80 years is clearly over, and on this issue of Ukraine, he’s both wrong and worse, petty.
Zelensky seems to be targeted (often falsely) because of things he did in the past that either hurt Trump or helped Democrats. Oh and the fact the Donald wants a peace prize. It’s that basic.
The journalist (Majorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend) who asked why Zelensky wasn’t wearing a suit in the Oval office has obviously missed Elon Musk prancing about like he owns the place – maybe he does – like a dad-model for a Target catalogue.
Yes, Europe needs to up its defence efforts, but a televised humiliation of a man who didn’t run away and is fighting for his countries survival was unforgivable, not least to see how much the Russians loved it.
Dimitry Medvedev issued his usual vodka fuelled tweet calling Zelensky, who is part Jewish, an ‘insolent pig” and how good it was to see The US President ‘give him a slap”
To see his glee was genuinely nauseating.
To be fair to our Prime Minister, Zelensky’s welcome in London this weekend was good to see and Sir Keir hit the right notes if we are, and we better be, prepared to stand with him – we can ask how they are paying for it, later, but the cost of not helping him will far exceed that of throwing him to the Russian Bear.
However, I digress.
Back to Henley, where after chairing a panel of three MPs Dr Ben Spencer, Alison Griffiths and Jack Rankin I was asked to do a sit down ‘fireside chat’ with Robert Jenrick.
I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. Robert Jenrick isn’t leader of the party. He is however leading a charge, with the backing of the person who is leader and her team, on Labour attacks and hard nosed opposition. His energy is focussed not on the Conservative party but revelling in the ‘target rich’ environment Labour have provided him.
So I asked him the obvious question:
“You have to accept that every time you pop up on social media, on the airwaves or in the papers people are going to wonder: ‘is he on manoeuvres?’”
“Look it’s inevitable, but I’m not. I’m doing my job, and I wouldn’t have joined the shadow Cabinet if I wasn’t supporting Kemi and the team and getting on with the serious business of opposition.”
This is important.
Does he still want the job of leader? Probably, but I’m not sure that’s the smoking gun our opponents or critics might hope for.
First, I’ve rarely met a Conservative MP who doesn’t harbour that ambition, however unlikely – remember dear Rehman Chishti’s run in 2022 – and that fact always reminds me of the time before he entered the Élysée palace, Nicholas Sarkozy was asked:
“When you’re shaving in the mirror do you think about being President of France one day?”
To which he replied “Not only when I’m shaving in the mirror”
Second you can want an outcome in the future, it’s how you get there that will determine how you are viewed. I don’t think any of the candidates last year see under-ground jostling for another go, would reflect anything but poorly on each of them. They may or may not harbour the ambition to have another try. So what.
Ambition, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Robert Jenrick was the youngest of the 2024 leadership pack, he has time, and he knows people some, especially in the media, will accuse him of working under the radar whatever he does right now.
I don’t think it’s naive to say, I’m not sure that is what he’s doing. He seems motivated by something else right now.
“When I went up and down the country last year the one thing people said to me apart from disappointment with our delivery and competence in government was the in-fighting. It was such a major reason people turned away from us, and as I said at the time it has to stop”
He knows people will accuse him of being part of it at that time, but few can genuinely escape that critique and when you actually grill him on the topic there’s a sense that he’s learned a lot from the experience of the leadership contest and is in a different head space than before the result.
If some are quietly hoping he’ll trigger a palace revolution, they need to think again.
This sense that unity – my goodness we heard a lot about that last year – is vital to rebuild the party’s fortunes has solidified, even if you think it’s a mistake. This was echoed by the three MPs on the earlier panel I chaired.
Publicly they are all saying the parliamentary party is united. As my colleague Henry Hill has pointed out that’s an easier achievement if you don’t yet know what the entire policy platform is, but I merely report what they said.
It’s a unity that we at ConHome know, privately is still peppered with some concerns and doubts – and we’ll never shy from reflecting that – but every single new leader in the party’s history has had this in the early stages. However if the question for each of our 121 MPs is: ‘are my doubts so profound that we risk another battle for the top?’ every time the answer seems to be, no.
So what is Robert Jenrick really up to?
He’s simply spoiling for a fight with Labour.
This is where his fellow shadow cabinet members could jump enthusiastically onboard, and some of them already are, and in their own ways. However he seems positively passionately about, and energised by, the targeting and damaging of Labours trials in government. He’s not afraid of taking on Reform UK too. When it comes to what the Conservatives should offer instead, he seems, as he urged delegates to do, to want to get involved in the policy forums that are coming soon.
In the meantime he seems to be cheerfully revelling in being an attack dog. What we need is the whole shadow cabinet pack hunting efficiently.
He’s been trying new things, a video piece recently on the legal flaws in the whole Chagos deal was born out a conversation with a colleague and they just put it together. There’s a bit of the ‘try it and see‘ start-up vibe when he talks about different ways to cut through. He echoed condemnation of the Oval Office spat and the mistreatment of Zelensky, quickly. He is smart enough to know that back home keeping up a drum beat of constant government harassment, of doing so in the cause of the party and collective success, does him no harm certainly, but more importantly it does the party and the project, good.
As I say, and again you can see it on the pages of ConHome, other shadow cabinet members are building their profiles and getting into the rhythm of striking at Government bruises and getting past Labour’s tired and frankly poor defences. Counter-intuitively, supporting the Government – as with Ukraine – when they get things right, actually makes attacks more powerful when they don’t.
The firm message from members I can glean is – ‘more of this please!’
The Westminster bubble thrives on gossip, and people will probably always look at certain politicians with one raised eyebrow, but right now, and for the forceable future don’t listen to what others say, watch what the politicians in question are actually doing.