How do you solve a problem like too many egos and too few jobs?
Robert Jenrick’s jump to Reform UK has been sold as a moment of right-wing consolidation: one party rising, the other collapsing, history moving in one clean direction. But be careful what you wish for. This moment may instead mark the point at which Reform’s biggest problem begins.
Until now, Reform has been an anti-establishment movement rather than a functioning political party. Its loose structures, strange foundations and glaring contradictions didn’t matter; it revolved around one dominant figure: Nigel Farage, the star and final arbiter.
That model works when you’re an insurgent, polling well and largely free of responsibility or scrutiny, but it becomes far harder to sustain once career politicians with serious ambitions start piling in.
Jenrick’s arrival transforms the internal chemistry overnight. He isn’t a grateful convert or eager lieutenant, but a former cabinet minister, experienced operator, and a blatantly ambitious one at that. His political career has been a study in the greasy pole: rising from former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s moderate, mousy right-hand man to a newly radicalised hard-right operator. Until recently, his relevance lay less in what he had done than in what he might become: very possibly the successor to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
Crucially, men like Jenrick do not burn bridges without assurances. Whatever you think of yesterday’s drama, this defection came with conditions. Robert Jenrick: future Chancellor of the Exchequer?
That immediately sharpens tensions inside a party already quietly riven by rivalry. Reform deputy leader Richard Tice, long cast as Farage’s natural heir (a role that has repeatedly slipped from his grasp), may not relish the arrival of another high-profile recruit with greater experience of government.
Zia Yusuf, widely tipped as Reform’s economic brain, has already clashed publicly with Jenrick, who last year called for Yusuf’s sacking after he “accidentally” liked an antisemitic post on X. And Reform’s London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham – an acerbic rising star – only days ago rebuked the idea of Jenrick joining the party at all, blaming him for the use of migrant hotels when he was in government.
Then there are the bumbling presences of Reform MP’s Lee Anderson and Sarah Pochin, alongside the less visible but no less ruthless figures lurking in the shadows: GB News presenters eyeing elected office, commentators hoping for another line on their CV. All of them circle the same small number of imagined offices in a party that doesn’t even have a shadow cabinet yet. Someone is going to be disappointed.
The moment Reform starts to look like a plausible government, jockeying will be inevitable. You can already hear the arguments forming. Can figures associated with successive Conservative failures really be back in charge? Or should people with no experience of government be handed the keys instead? With a party culture shaped on X, honed for maximum brutality, this is not a group likely to resolve disputes privately or kindly.
This is where Reform’s contradictions start to bite. It sells itself as a clean break from Westminster games, yet increasingly resembles a retirement home of embittered Conservatives, rocking in their chairs, deluded by the notion that they themselves were never the problem. Voters drawn to Farage’s outsider shtick may not be so receptive to watching the same tired cast of characters squabble over hypothetical ministerial jobs three years early.
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Then there is Farage himself. He may enjoy being the kingmaker, but kingmakers have to keep their kings in check. Famously, the Reform leader has never been comfortable sharing the spotlight, as anyone who watched Ukip implode will know. Reform has so far avoided that fate by staying small and centralised, but Jenrick’s explosive arrival makes that balance harder to maintain.
None of this will break overnight. For now, discipline is incentivised by high polls, media attention and the shared thrill of Tory collapse (a pleasure I’m not immune to). But parties built on personal ambition disintegrate when victory looks plausible, and contenders begin imagining the plaques on their office doors.
So, yes, Jenrick’s defection hurts the Conservatives. But it may also mark the beginning of something else: the moment Reform swapped disruption for the messy business of ambition.
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