The right can’t unite. It’s now a vicious struggle for dominance between the Tories and Reform

The rancour unleashed by Robert Jenrick's defection exposes a battle that has become intensely bitter and personal

- Andrew Rawnsley

After the dimming of his prospects of making Tory leader... Jenrick opened clandestine negotiations with Reform.

The right will continue to fight. There is now no chance of the Tories and Reform kissing, making up and striking an electoral deal for the foreseeable. It is going to be a merciless grapple for supremacy on the right. That is the conclusion I draw from the outpourings of bitterness and bile triggered by the rattery of Robert Jenrick.The official explanation for his lateness in turning up at his own defection announcement is that he got lost in a stairwell trying to find his way around an unfamiliar building. That wouldn't be the first time the MP for Newark has been on a convoluted journey. He was a so-called “Tory moderniser” when that was the Conservative fashion, and such a slavish follower of David Cameron that it earned him the nickname “Robert Generic”. He then became a devotee of Boris Johnson before morphing into a nasty culture warrior and anti-immigration zealot who, as a Home Office minister, ordered the removal of Disney murals at a child-refugee centre because they were “too welcoming”.