Bernard Argente: Badenoch needs to ask herself whether her MPs trust her or she distrusts her MPs

Bernard Argente writer, student, and parliamentary researcher who assisted Richard Tice and his staff.

What happens when a politician defects to another party? Or perhaps a more apt question to ask may be: does such a politician have a choice?

In the case of former Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, he may have played the part of the Roman politician Brutus in the veritable play of this Parliament’s debacle.

After being sacked by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick defected to Reform UK last month, leaving the vast majority of Kemi’s cabinet with the sentiment: Et tu, Jenrick?

But did he orchestrate it, or did the morning sacking entail a predestined chain of events?

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles tells the story of an ill-fated protagonist, Oedipus, who unwittingly fulfils a prophecy, ergo killing his father. In our scenario, our central figure, Robert Jenrick, has rebelled against his leader, which may have been a response to the sacking, which functioned as a catalyst to a series of events which turned to realise Badenoch’s qualms.

Had the Leader of the Opposition not doubted her Secretary, Reform might not have received another heretic in its arsenal. It is imperative for the Conservative Party, with its policy of curtailing turncoats, not to ostracize suspected members as if it were a witch hunt.

The Conservative Party has flourished hitherto Benjamin Disraeli in its conglomerated and immovable community, in which it cannot be compartmentalized. Notwithstanding, the vitality of the Conservatives is indirectly proportional to Reform’s.

Members must not stay neutral, as it would be like when the angels of God who chose to remain neutral were banished to the Antechamber, as Dante’s Vergil put it: “These are individuals who refused to take a stand in life, choosing neither good nor evil.”

The Conservatives will never need Reform, even when it ostensibly seems that way. It is, however, Reform that needs the Conservatives! Just as in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four the Ministry of Truth tried to change historical records and newspapers, Reform’s ex-Tory MPs will try to hide their past tweets lambasting Reform leader Nigel Farage, but the truth will remain static and the same.

“Britain is not broken”, wrote Kemi as a riposte to Jenrick’s statements. The leader of the Opposition has made this loss appear to be a victory akin to removing a parasite leeching off a host, but to Farage he has interpreted this as another man’s trash is another man’s treasure!

Whilst Badenoch had indeed been acting reflexively to ‘damning reports’ on Jenrick, it predicted a wave of other prominent Conservative MPs following Jenrick in kind, notably Andrew Rosindell, who defected to Reform UK primarily due to what he believes to be Chagos deal mismanagement and what he describes as the ‘surrender’ of British territory and Suella Braverman, who’d long been on the list of suspects.

The Conservative Party is believed to have identified several other MPs who may potentially defect to the Reform UK Party.

This list consists of several important names, Sir John Hayes, Esther McVey, Mark Francois, and Sir Desmond Swayne, and also entails nascent MPs such as Katie Lam and Bradley Thomas. This begs the question of whether Kemi has rooted out traitors upon traitors or if she has labelled them traitors, which is the role they must fulfil at the end of the play. Chekhov’s gun is a literary device derived from the Russian playwright. The device acts as a gun set in a play, and for it to be introduced, it must be fired. The Tory leader has cast herself a veritable gun in this play, and now that she has shot the villain, it signifies a posthumous warning to other MPs with the notion of treachery to not entertain those feelings.

But the question remains: Did Jenrick appoint himself the villain in Kemi’s story, or was it an unfortunate circumstance in which he had to play the cards he had been dealt? In the fullness of time, we may learn if this will have a domino effect on other MPs. But what is clear to Farage is that even if Kemi regards this situation as “Nigel Farage doing my spring cleaning”, Farage, on the other hand, thanks her for what he believes to be a late Christmas gift.

Badenoch must not follow the same philosophy Labour has with its divided branches, as it weakens the party to an attack from the outside. She must also understand the party’s ordeal to be analogous to a chess game—where her MPs are her pieces, and to sacrifice them blatantly or, worse, hand them to a rival party is  blundering the game.

Kemi must ask her party the question: Is it the party not trusting her, or is it her not trusting her party?