If you want to know what’s wrong with British politics and the media’s relationship with it, Robert Jenrick’s bumpy landing at Reform UK offers a solid starting point.
“It’s time for the truth. Britain is in decline,” he said on Thursday, after arriving late to announce his defection to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK from a Conservative Party he once aspired to lead.
Opportunistic, noisy, and clumsily handled, his announcement and the media reaction to it neatly sums up the Westminster bubble’s failure to look beyond personalities that increasing numbers of people can’t stand.
It farcically followed Jenrick’s sacking from the shadow cabinet after Conservative aides found a draft speech announcing his defection lying around before he had a chance to use it.
This was the ‘irrefutable evidence’ of Jenrick’s disloyalty Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch cited when confirming Jenrick’s sacking on social media.
Jenrick went silent for hours. Badenoch scuppered Farage’s plan to publicly welcome him to an ‘insurgent’ party which increasingly resembles a failed old guard that Reform’s leader eagerly sets himself against.
And the media lapped it up.
Media misfires
Kemi Badenoch’s team will be rightly happy with her seizing the moment and stealing the headlines from Jenrick. She spoke earnestly about psychodrama and respect for voters.
Commentators praised what they saw as decisiveness from Mrs Badenoch. It showed how she turned bad news into a moment of decisive leadership, some said. Another one of those ‘Thatcher moments,’ even.
Give me strength. In reality, this was a last-minute sacking, not decisive leadership.
Jenrick’s jumping ship comes as no surprise to anyone interested in politics. The warnings were there for months, alongside nasty comments about race which would warrant a sacking in ordinary times.
Zoom out for a second, and this looks more like a boss who’s tried to hold a struggling team with a bad manager together, avoiding action until she knows the resignation note is about to hit her desk.
Badenoch managed the fallout well, but could have avoided it altogether by acting sooner.
Someone else’s fault
After discussing the sacking for hours, attention switched to Robert Jenrick’s assessment of Britain’s failings. He didn’t hold back.
Wages flatlining. House prices rocketing. Waiting lists sky high. Migration out of control. Important issues, for sure. But there was no true reflection of his time in the government as housing secretary, and minister for immigration and health at the time this decline took hold. He didn’t mention austerity once. Or Brexit, which is strange for someone who voted to remain – amazing as that seems today.
Housing journalist Pete Apps writes about his time as housing secretary leading the department tasked with addressing the post-Grenfell building safety crisis. He offended victims’ groups and oversaw the creation of a bureaucratic nightmare for people trying to buy and sell apartments.
Apps – who knows his stuff – calls Jenrick the worst Housing Secretary he can remember in his Substack.
Talking Britain down
I’m more annoyed by his pushing the narrative that ‘Britain is broken’, before exiting stage right.
Britain has problems but addressing them is more complex than politicians with easy answers and reporters on a deadline acknowledge.
I’ve been reading about the challenges facing places, as it’s a big part of our work with clients involved in regeneration and supporting communities.
Economic geographer Danny Dorling’s latest book Peak Injustice explains that Britain is one of the most economically unequal countries on Earth. Children in deprived communities are becoming shorter, and mortality rates are rising.
In Left Behind, economist Paul Collier explains how South Yorkshire is today amongst Europe’s poorest places. He offers hopeful examples of communities with good leaders and strong business networks who make positive and lasting impact and bring places back from the brink.
In different ways, both lay the blame for Britain’s economic problems firmly at the door of tired, centralised policymaking which consistently fails places – with terrible consequences for communities who are left behind.
This is why thousands of children in cities like Bristol face hunger during school holidays because families can’t afford to put food on the table. This is what a low-wage economy combined with high housing, energy and food costs achieves.
And this is the context surrounding Jenrick’s comments, while the media raves on about strong leadership. He is part of the failure he speaks of. His speech failed to acknowledge this, let alone own it.
While the circus rolls on, those who see what’s happening up close crack on with addressing the fallout. We are proud to support them where we can.
Britain is better than this
I am frustrated, but I don’t want to be bleak, because there is reason to be hopeful while others trash this country.
Our culture – sport, music, TV, fashion – is globally renowned. The BBC is a recognised worldwide and invests in regions and creates opportunities that wouldn’t exist without it.
Our best universities are world leading, pioneering research that addresses the biggest challenges – climate change, AI, security, clean energy, nuclear technology, and health.
Our cities are places where great things happen. London is one of the world’s best.
The creative sector my business is part of employs thousands of people in the West of England, delivering campaigns that support growth and change people’s lives.
None of these things are perfect, but they represent the best of us – vibrant, innovative, purposeful, and driven.
If you want people to trust you to run the country, it helps not to speak like you hate it.
As someone who set their business up three months before Liz Truss’ mini budget, I’ve no time for empty diatribes without any sense of ownership.
Together, we’re bigger and better than that.
Where does this leave Labour?
In the spirit of chasing the next headline, Labour will be content that media attention switched briefly from their problems on Thursday.
Ministers will now spend the coming months warning us of the threat posed by Reform ahead of May’s local and devolved elections.
People who know more than me about such things expect Labour to do badly in these elections. Sir Keir Starmer is deeply unpopular with the public and hasn’t communicated a vision for the country which pulls together a policy and announcement blitz into a story that people relate to.
Robert Jenrick steps into that vacuum, offering something worse. But pointing that out is no strategy for success.
It’s possible that people will turn away from Reform as they see more of it. But I also want progressives to set out something better, because I worry that Robert Jenrick really could break Britain if he gets the chance. And we won’t defeat his argument by trying to scare people. Remember Project Fear?
More honesty, less spin and a sign that something better awaits us will help.
I’ll come back to this in a future post.
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