I had a recent pint with Robert Jenrick - here are five clues his defection was coming

JUST over a decade ago, Robert Jenrick was campaigning against Nigel Farage’s UKIP party in the Newark by-election.

- By OLIVER PRIDMORE

The contest ended up with Mr Jenrick becoming the Conservative MP for Newark, a role he held until Thursday. Now he says that Nigel Farage is the best man to run the country. What a journey.

Speculation around Mr Jenrick defecting to Reform UK has been swirling for months and it was one of many reasons I was keen to have a sit-down interview with him just before Christmas.

At Mr Jenrick’s suggestion, we met in a pub. He said that “local issues” should be front and centre of the discussion, but he knew questions around the Reform speculation would arise. It turned out that in looking for clues about Mr Jenrick’s future, I didn’t need to do a psychoanalysis of what he was wearing or what crisps he was eating (chorizo by the way).

The Newark MP said on multiple occasions in our interview that he was continuing to ‘plough his own furrow’, which could be seen as a reference to him waging a one-man war on X against issues ranging from fare dodging to dodgy car boot sales. Yet the comment spoke to something broader, with Mr Jenrick saying: “I've tried in recent years, in particular, to be a very independent-minded member of parliament.”