Histories of the present: Jenrick’s great moving right show lurches further right still
The media is bad at history, even very recent history. When Robert Jenrick resigned as a Home Office Minister in December 2023 he spoke to Laura Kuenssberg on her Sunday morning slot and claimed that migrants don’t integrate into British society. He gave as an example the thousands who have marched and continue to march to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Yet his resignation was not about that but about self-promotion. More recently his focus has been on Pakistanis who he, falsely, claims are over represented in grooming cases. He could have acted on this when a Minister but of course did not.
In October 2024 he suggested that the Israeli flag be shown at points of entry to the UK. Usually senior Tories patriotism focuses on the UK but Jenrick’s allegiance is apparently to Tel Aviv.
That was part of his bid to become Tory leader. He narrowly lost out to Kemi Badenoch.
Following his resignation there were attempts to suggest that his lurch to the right was a recent thing. It wasn’t
When he was Communities Minister in 2021 Jenrick has announced in the Sunday Telegraph that he planned to make any changes to historic statues and monuments subject to planning laws.
In doing so Jenrick used Trumpian language. Anti-racist protesters were a ‘baying mob’ while democratically elected local councillors are a ‘cultural committee’ of town hall militants and woke worthies”. If we were to lower ourselves to Jenrick’s level what he was actually proposing was to override local democratic processes with decisions by a coterie of racist Tory Ministers.
Jenrick is part of a Tory Great Moving Right Show and it could end up moving very far right indeed based on present performance.
His latest lurch was a piece in the Telegraph (4th January) about Britain’s Pakistani community that is unrelentingly racist (it can be found on his Twitter account). In the days following he has doubled down on the comments.
Jenrick’s language in the Telegraph article is the kind of thing that caused Ted Heath to sack Enoch Powell over his 1968 Rivers of Blood speech. However Badenoch did not sack Jenrick but tweeted that his claims about an ‘alien culture’ were just part of legitimate free speech.
As things stand Jenrick is pitching further to the right than Reform UK Ltd. Whether his aim is to split the Tories and replace Farage (no easy matter as Farage is the owner of the Party) or to replace Badenoch after the May Council Elections and look to do an electoral deal with Reform we’ll find out.
The LibDems have called on Badenoch to sack Jenrick. Clearly she has no issue with his comments. As the Tory leader it might be thought there would be concerns about Jenrick freelancing with a comments across a number of Ministerial briefs.
Building anti-racist opposition and an alternative to the left that defends immigration as a positive in British life (for many centuries) must be on the agenda
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