Robert Jenrick joins Reform UK. Past switches often drew a second MP.
Kemi Badenoch sacked Robert Jenrick as shadow justice secretary on 15 January after learning he planned to defect. He joined Reform UK that evening.
What happened
Jenrick joined Reform UK at a joint press conference with Farage, hours after Badenoch sacked him citing ‘clear, irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect’.
Kemi Badenoch sacked Robert Jenrick on . The Conservative leader removed him from her top team and took away the party whip, so he no longer sat as a Conservative MP. She had been handed copies of the speech he planned to give on leaving and a media plan. She said the evidence showed he was “plotting in secret to defect”.
The sacking did not stop the move. Jenrick had run against Badenoch in the final round of the 2024 Conservative leadership race. That same day he appeared with Nigel Farage at a press conference arranged in a hurry and joined Reform UK. He later became the party’s Treasury spokesman.
What came next was not what many expected. Jenrick’s exit removed the strongest threat to Badenoch from inside her party. By June, Conservative MPs were crediting her strong performances in Commons debates for a clear rise in the party’s mood, even after difficult local elections in May.
No second Conservative MP has followed Jenrick so far. Reform still leads the national polls, and the pull that moved him has not weakened.
Sources: Politico, New Statesman
The Pattern
The first MP to switch party is usually not the last. We looked at five times since 1981 when an MP left their party for another. In four, another MP followed within six months. In the one exception, a general election got in the way.
Show the other 3 cases
The Read
History points to a second MP. In four of five past cases another MP followed the first within six months. The pull is still there. Reform leads the polls, and Jenrick got a front-bench job rather than being pushed aside. For Conservative MPs in seats where Reform is strong, the reasons that moved him still apply. Nigel Farage has every reason to win a second switch while Labour has no settled leader, when a switch would lead the news for days.
The doubt is that almost six months have passed with nobody moving. Badenoch is stronger now than on the day she sacked him. Acting first took away Reform’s surprise and showed her MPs what she would do. The MPs most tempted have watched Farage spend the summer under a standards inquiry, and watched Jenrick give up a real chance to lead the Conservatives for a spokesman’s job.
The six months run out in mid-July. A second Conservative MP joining Reform by then would fit the past pattern. If the quiet summer holds while Westminster watches the Labour leadership, this would be the second case, after Lee Anderson in 2024, where the first MP to switch stayed alone.
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