Looks like he's happy to welcome frauds into his party.
In yet more embarrassment for Nigel Farage and Reform UK, it’s emerged that Farage called his latest Tory defector Robert Jenrick ‘a fraud’ less than a year ago.
Jenrick became the latest high-profile Tory to defect to Reform, which claims to be an anti-establishment party but which has now welcomed more than 20 former Tory MPs into its ranks.
In a day of turmoil for the Conservatives, party leader Kemi Badenoch announced that she was sacking Jenrick after uncovering ‘clear, irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect in a way designed to be as damaging as possible to his shadow cabinet colleagues and the wider Conservative Party.’
One shadow cabinet minister claimed Jenrick left a printed copy of his resignation speech lying around, “like something from The Thick Of It”.
Hours later Jenrick announced his defection to Reform saying that the Conservatives “broke” the country, were “rotten” and had “betrayed its voters”.
Farage thanked Badenoch for expelling her former Tory leadership rival and helping “realign the centre-right of British politics”. He also called Jenrick’s defection “the latest Christmas present I’ve ever had”.
However, while Farage may be all smiles in front of the cameras, less than year ago he called Jenrick ‘a fraud’.
During debates over asylum hotels last summer, Farage shared a quote from Jenrick in 2022, in which the then immigration minister said he had procured even more hotels for asylum seekers.
The Clacton MP wrote: “Jenrick is a fraud. I’ve always thought so, this quote proves it.”
Looks like he’s happy to welcome frauds into his party.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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