'Farage has done my spring cleaning': Tories gear up to fight for the right

The Conservatives plan to intensify their attacks on Reform’s economic policy as they gear up for a fight to the death between the two big parties of the right, a battle brought to new levels of acrimony by Robert Jenrick’s defection.

- Peter Walker Kiran Stacey

While Jenrick, the former shadow justice secretary, insisted he was “uniting the right” in signing up to Reform, Kemi Badenoch portrayed her former colleague as dishonest and no loss to the Conservatives, saying: “Nigel Farage is doing my spring cleaning for me.”

In a blistering TV interview of his own, Jenrick castigated Badenoch’s Conservatives, saying that the “arsonists” who tanked its reputation were still in charge.

While it remains to be seen whether any other sitting Tory MPs will follow Jenrick, the open rancour makes it extremely unlikely that a Badenoch-led Conservative party would do a deal with Reform, pitting the parties against each other in a fight for votes that will start with May’s elections in Scotland and Wales and for English councils.

The Conservatives remain well behind Reform in national polling, but Badenoch and her team hope a gradual shift in voter attention from migration to the economy will help her party, with a recent internal Tory strategy meeting focused on the its economic message.

Internal Conservative polling suggests economic policy is a key weakness for Reform, along with the sense that the party is a one-man band.