Opinion
On the blasted heath that is current British politics, weeks don’t come much crazier than last one. I arrived in London on Thursday. Shortly before I left Australia, the news broke of yet another high-profile Tory defection to Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform Party. This time it was Nadhim Zahawi, who served briefly as chancellor of the exchequer under Boris Johnson, and was later chairman of the Conservative Party.
Then, not five hours after I landed at Heathrow, a much bigger story broke. The Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch announced on social media that she had sacked Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, and suspended him from the party for “gross disloyalty”.
The circumstances of Jenrick’s dismissal had none of the artful Machiavellianism usually associated with the Conservatives. It was pure comedy. Apparently, an aide had left a copy of his resignation speech on a photocopier, where it was discovered by an opposition staffer. Badenoch acted swiftly and brutally, depriving Farage and Jenrick of the chance to reveal the defection in their own time and with maximum impact. Later that day, a flustered Jenrick appeared at a hasty press conference with Farage to confirm it, but Badenoch had already stolen first-mover advantage.
Jenrick is not just another random Tory malcontent. He was runner-up in the leadership election after the Conservative wipeout at the 2024 election: in the final run-off ballot of grassroots members he secured 44.5 per cent. In particular, his uncompromising line on immigration appealed to the party faithful. There has since been a near-to-universal expectation that Badenoch would not last the distance to the next election (due in 2029); were she to fall, Jenrick was the standout favourite to replace her. Suddenly, he was gone.
Ordinarily, for an opposition to be deserted by its second-most important politician would be a devastating blow. But that is not how it played out, at least initially. Badenoch was praised for swift and decisive action. Meanwhile, Jenrick’s botched defection cast him as a Basil Fawlty-like political incompetent (as well as a shameless liar). Instantly, all the pressure was taken off Badenoch’s leadership. With her main rival gone, and no other member of shadow cabinet seen as a serious threat, she was overnight transformed from an interim leader swinging in the breeze to the person who will take the Tories to the next election. Far from blowing up the Conservative Party as he intended, Jenrick’s bungled betrayal stabilised it.
This came at a time when Badenoch’s political standing had begun, slightly but perceptibly, to lift. The Tories recently overtook Labour in the polls – albeit by the barest of margins, 20 per cent to 19 per cent. She is generally acknowledged to have consistently got the better of the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, in question time. Starmer, a wooden performer whose style is hectoring and never nimble, looks and sounds like a preachy human rights lawyer from modish north London, which is precisely what he is.
The sharpening of Badenoch’s attack has coincided with the recruitment to her office of the former Victorian MP Tim Smith. Smith, who left parliament under a cloud in 2022 following a drink-driving incident (he was shadow attorney-general at the time), has enjoyed impressive success in British politics, including as senior producer at the highest-rating Sunday morning political talk show, on the conservative network GB News, and now as the person credited with bringing Australian ruthlessness to the effete world of Tory politics. (In the interim, he had a stint as senior adviser to Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel – not a gig for the faint-hearted.)
Smith, like Lynton Crosby and Isaac Levido before him, is the latest in the well-established tradition of the Conservatives recruiting Aussie brains and political muscle to smarten up their operation. The pragmatic Tories sadly accept that, as with cricket, Australians are just a lot better at politics.
The Jenrick defection presents an exquisite difficulty for Farage. There is no doubt he has had the wind in his sails since the election. His party continues to lead in the polls (although it recently dipped from 28 per cent to 23 per cent). Having trashed the Conservatives in 2024 (the leakage of Tory votes to Reform cost them at least 60, maybe 80 seats), he now has Labour in his sights. He has vastly more appeal to Labour’s working-class base than its own leader. Farage looks at home in a pub; Starmer looks lost anywhere but an Islington dinner party.
Farage has been brilliantly successful as a political disruptor – first in the European Parliament, then in domestic politics. He was always a burr under the saddle of the establishment, whom he mocks with unrelenting – and very entertaining – scorn. Now he is the leading contender to be the next non-Labour prime minister.
It’s a difficult act to pull off – to be at once the scourge of the political class and the PM in waiting. It worked for Donald Trump, but the dynamic of parliamentary systems is very different. The British speak of “the Westminster village” as we speak of “the Canberra bubble”. Farage, who had always been the outsider throwing rocks from beyond the palisade, is now one of the most important villagers.
With every new Tory defection – no fewer than 10 former ministers so far – Reform looks less like a party of radical disruptors and more like a life raft for Conservative politicians the voters turned out in 2024. During his press conference with Jenrick, Farage tried to meet this charge by saying defensively that Reform needed to recruit former ministers so it would have, when in government, “people who know what they’re doing”. It was a terrible line, for so many obvious reasons.
Now, all the leadership speculation is upon Starmer.
Just as the first fortnight of December is the killing zone for Australian political leaders, in Britain it is late May and June. (In both cases, it’s seasonal: best to get the knifing done before the summer holidays.) The key date is May 7, when elections take place for the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, and local councils. While the incumbent in Westminster almost always does badly, no amount of expectation management will be enough to inoculate Labour against the magnitude of its looming electoral calamity. Wales, in particular, is the place to watch – the deepest of deep Labour heartland.
There is now increasingly febrile speculation of a May challenge to Starmer. His polling numbers are awful – worse than Rishi Sunak or even Liz Truss. Although it’s been the gossip of Westminster since the middle of last year, then it looked like trouble-making. Now, the talk is deadly serious.
In July 2024, when Starmer led Labour to its second-greatest victory, and the Conservatives suffered their worst defeat in 200 years, you would have been thought mad if you predicted that, just 18 months later, the person who became leader of the shattered Tories would look secure in her job, while it was uncertain whether the prime minister would last two years in his.
It’s a funny old business, politics. Sussan Ley should take note.
George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.
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George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.
