The leaked document also boasted the ex-Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick would be the ‘biggest defection story’ Nigel Farage’s right-wing party has ever had
Tory turncoat Robert Jenrick’s media plan for his defection to Reform UK referred to him as the “new sheriff in town”, reports have claimed.
It also boasted the ex-Shadow Justice Secretary would be the “biggest defection story” Nigel Farage’s right-wing party has ever had. The cringe-inducing plan was leaked after Kemi Badenoch sacked Mr Jenrick from her Shadow Cabinet after getting wind of his defection plot.
Once dubbed “Robert Generic” by critics, the senior Tory MP joined Reform UK hours later. According to the Sunday Times internal planning documents from Mr Jenrick’s team and “discovered” by Ms Badenoch suggested he planned to defect within days.
It said: “You’re the biggest defection story Reform has ever had (and likely ever will be), the most popular Tory Shadow Cabinet member, leader-in-waiting if Kemi ever falls and the most dynamic politician in the Conservative Party.”
READ MORE: Tory-Reform war erupts as defector Robert Jenrick brands ex-party ‘arsonists’
It also described him as the “new sheriff in town, here to provide experience and political heft to Reform’s operation” and stressed he would be there to “support Nigel”.
A source close to Mr Jenrick said he had no involvement in the drafting of the document. A spokesman for Mr Jenrick said: “As the document makes clear, Rob is just a member of Nigel’s team and wants to help get him in as prime minister. And it’s a team which, unlike the Tories, wants to change Britain rather than pretend it isn’t broken.”
It came as Tracy Brabin, the Labour Mayor of West Yorkshire, told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Reform is now turning into a care home for clapped-out Tories. It seems like the people who can’t get on in the Conservative Party, or they see potentially that they are not going to be a leader anymore, that they are going to jump ship.”
In recent days Reform has also boasted of a defection from the Labour Party this week. Pressed on Sky News, Lisa Nandy joked: “It’s not me. It’s definitely not me.” Asked about the Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Ms Nandy laughed, adding: “Absolutely not – not in a million years. I think he’d probably rather claw his own eyes out than get involved in that rabble.”
Ms Nandy failed to rule out claiming Nigel Farage would lead a fascist government if he wins the keys to No10. The Culture Secretary, who was reported to have made the claim at a Cabinet meeting last week, would not confirm or deny the claims.
But she told Sky News: “I’m not sure that labels are particularly helpful … Well, I’ve got a lot of experience of living with the consequences of othering and people who are trying to divide us from one another. And I guess I would just say that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, in my experience, it usually is a duck.”