Reform candidate previously mocked Robert Jenrick and warned that Reform risks becoming “Tory tribute act”

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Matt Goodwin mocked Robert Jenrick for using weight loss drugs and wasn’t happy with the number of Tories joining Reform

Matt Goodwin, Reform's candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election

Reform’s Gorton and Denton by-election candidate made a series of attacks on his party as recently as last November.

Matt Goodwin made a cutting jibe at Robert Jenrick’s use of the weight loss drugs and said that Reform risks becoming a “Tory tribute act” by welcoming large numbers of ex-Tories.

As reported by The Mirror, last May, Goodwin mocked Jenrick for using Ozempic.

Goodwin said: “The thing with Jenrick though is, like somebody once said, you can take an injection for weight loss but you can’t take an injection for personality, you know and I think there’s an underlying issue there in that.”

He said that with Jenrick “there is no charisma” and “he’s not as strong as he thinks he is”.

Just four months ago, the GB News presenter wrote in ConservativeWoman that an influx of former Conservatives could destroy Reform.

“If the party takes too many ex-Tories it risks quickly looking like a Tory tribute act, inviting the same people who very nearly destroyed our country to have another go at destroying it all over again,” he wrote.

Goodwin also pointed out that welcoming Tories Reform dilutes its “anti-establishment” appeal. 

He said: “You cannot be an anti-establishment party if you accept lots of people from the establishment.”

In November, Mr Goodwin called the Tories and Jenrick a “total joke”.

He said: “If you invited an architect into your house and that architect destroyed your house, you would not invite that architect back.”

Labour MP Andrew Western told The Mirror: “Matthew Goodwin claimed to be fed up with Farage stuffing his party full of failed Tories, but then decided to join them. You couldn’t make it up.”

“He’s said himself that these are the same Tories who failed Britain before and they’d do the same all over again through Reform. And Goodwin would help them do it – using Gorton and Denton as a blueprint for the chaos they’d inflict elsewhere.”

A Reform spokesperson said: “Matt made these comments when Robert Jenrick was a Conservative MP as part of the rough and tumble of British politics.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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