Robert Jenrick’s Tense Reunion With Tory MP Live On TV

Robert Jenrick had a very tense reunion with one of his onetime Conservative colleagues on live TV on Friday as they argued over his painful defection to Reform.

Jenrick, who is now Reform’s Treasury spokesperson, was celebrating his party’s success on the BBC after it won more than 400 seats in the local elections in England.

But he was sat next to Victoria Atkins, the Conservatives’ shadow environment secretary – and she quickly got personal.

“Robert and I haven’t actually spoken to each other since I supported his leadership [bid to take over the Tories],” the MP for Louth and Horncastle said.

“So I’m surprised he’s so quick to can all of the work he did in the government when he was immigration minister, but also the work that we were trying to do since the general election in order to rebuild.”

She pointed out that Jenrick was also “part of the team that made those mistakes” when the Conservatives were in government.

He hit back that the public’s “trust is completely and utterly gone” for the Tories.

“People do not want a return of the Conservative party. It is a dead party,” the MP for Newark claimed, pointing to their decline in local authorities across England.

Atkins hit back: “Rob has not spoken to me since he left the Conservative Party in the way that he did. And I considered us to be very good friends.

“It’s been a great personal loss to me, as well as a professional one. The reason I raise this is because Rob is the economic spokesperson for Reform.

“And I think how one conducts themselves is important. I think that this is a message that will continue until the general election. If people are asking voters for trust, then it has to be genuine.”

Jenrick was sacked as shadow justice secretary by Kemi Badenoch after she got wind of his plan to defect to Reform back in January.

Asked for his response to Atkins’ comment about trust, he just said: “I don’t personalise things!”

The BBC’s Nicholas Watts pointed out that Atkins had campaigned for Jenrick’s by-election bid in 2014, and for his leadership bid in 2024.

He then sat in the shadow cabinet for months under Badenoch – while plotting to join their main right-wing rivals.

Atkins also suggested that Jenrick’s criticisms of the last Conservative government do not land because he had a prominent role as immigration minister – at a time when migration numbers were going up.

“You were a cabinet minister who signed of the immigration policies of Boris Johnson,” Atkins said.

Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper, who was also sat on the panel, then chimed in.

She said: “I feel like I’m sitting in on a marriage counselling session of the right-wing of British politics, it’s very peculiar to watch and listen to, quite frankly.”

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