Kemi Badenoch did not bother with euphemisms. There was no talk of “regret”, no ritual thanks for past service, and no careful phrasing designed to soothe bruised egos. Instead, the Conservative leader reached for the political equivalent of a stiff brush and a bin bag. Robert Jenrick’s defection to Reform UK, she said, amounted to Nigel Farage doing her “spring cleaning”.
It was a striking phrase and a revealing one. In Badenoch’s telling, Jenrick was not a loss to be managed but clutter to be cleared out. Farage, long cast by Conservatives as an electoral menace, was recast as an unpaid caretaker, hauling away what Badenoch plainly regarded as dead political weight.
“He’s taking away my problems,” she told GB News, adding that the party was now “more united and stronger” because it had lost “someone who was not a team player”. In one sweep, she dismissed both the man and the melodrama that usually accompanies high-profile defections. There would be no pretence that this was anything other than a relief.
Then came the sharper edge. Badenoch went further, saying her former shadow justice secretary “tells a lot of lies” and that you “can’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth”. This was not coded language or Westminster tittle-tattle. It was a direct assault on Jenrick’s credibility, delivered without the insulating layers of anonymity or briefing.
For a party often paralysed by its fear of internal rows becoming public, the bluntness was almost shocking. But it also spoke to the moment the Conservatives find themselves in. Badenoch is attempting to draw a hard line between what she wants her party to be and what it has become over the past decade: factional, unstable, and forever glancing over its shoulder at Farage.
Jenrick’s journey makes him a useful symbol in that effort. Elected as a mainstream Conservative, a Remainer who once backed Theresa May, he drifted steadily towards the performative outrage and culture-war rhetoric that now defines Reform UK. His defection was less a leap than the final step in a long shuffle to the right. Badenoch’s message was simple: if that is where you want to be, go. The party will not chase you.
There is also calculation here. By framing Jenrick as a liar and a disruptive presence, Badenoch inoculates herself against the inevitable claims that Reform UK is siphoning off “real Conservatives”. Her argument is that these were never team players in the first place but individuals more interested in personal advancement and grievance politics than collective purpose.
Farage, meanwhile, is cast as both rival and refuse collector. It is a clever rhetorical move. Badenoch diminishes him by suggesting his party’s growth depends on absorbing the Conservatives’ cast-offs, while simultaneously using him to tidy up her own ranks. Reform UK becomes less a rising force than a clearinghouse for discontent.
Whether this strategy works electorally is another matter. But politically, Badenoch has made her position unmistakably clear. She will not plead for unity at any price. She will not flatter defectors on their way out. And she will not pretend that ideological incoherence can be disguised as broad church conservatism.
In an era when politicians often default to mushy platitudes, Badenoch’s language was refreshingly brutal. Jenrick may have gained a new party, but he left behind a leader who seems more than happy to say, in public and without apology, that the Conservatives are better off without him.
