Latest / The Fourcast / Jenrick defects: can Reform win the next election?

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Jenrick defects: can Reform win the next election? · The Fourcast

0:00
Like yesterday was it was box office.
0:02
Like in Westminster terms this was box office, But if this was
0:05
a divorce, this is basically like a posh episode of
0:08
EastEnders. Who's the one group of people
0:10
that Nigel Farage does not particularly like having in his
0:12
parties? Ambitious people.
0:14
And you even saw in the press conference he was giving those
0:16
nervous little Robert, don't you dare do anything.
0:19
The rule seems to be that you the one thing you can't do is is
0:23
question Nigel or challenge Nigel because he will then come
0:25
back and and and finish you off. Hello and welcome to the
0:32
forecast. It has been quite the week in
0:35
Westminster. A sacking, A defection and a
0:37
deepening crisis on the right. Robert Genrick's move to Reform
0:41
has capped off a dramatic few days for the Conservatives.
0:44
While Nigel Farage has celebrated the moment, calling
0:47
it a historic realignment of centre right politics in the
0:50
United Kingdom, the Prime Minister has described the
0:53
Conservative Party as a sinking ship.
0:56
Genrick himself has said his defection will unite the right.
0:59
So what does this mean for the future of the Conservatives?
1:02
And what does Genrick's defection mean for Reform?
1:05
Is there a real possibility that Reform could win the next
1:08
election? Here to unpack the latest of the
1:10
deputy editor of Conservative Home, Henry Hill, and our senior
1:13
political correspondent, Paul McNamara.
1:16
Thanks very much, both of you, for for joining me, Paul.
1:19
First, the party line from the Tory leadership seems to be
1:22
we're better off without him. You know, like when you're a
1:24
teenager and you're dumped. I didn't want to go out with you
1:26
anyway. Are they right?
1:28
I mean, God love them, they are putting on a good spin.
1:31
But in if this was a divorce, this is basically like a posh
1:35
episode of EastEnders. Kimmy's kicked out Bobby Chris,
1:39
he's found out he's having an affair with No, he's bloody
1:41
hell. They've turned up to the Queen
1:43
Victoria and now they're shaking up together and he's slagging
1:46
off everyone in her family. And he never really loved her
1:48
anyway. This is like yesterday was it
1:52
was box office. Like in Westminster terms, this
1:54
was box office and the start of the day was a desperate bid from
1:59
everyone to try and get up on top of the of the headlines.
2:03
And Kemi did like she did a a great job.
2:05
I don't know what you're experiencing from everyone that
2:08
you were talking to the Conservatives, but it didn't
2:11
actually play the blinder first, first thing in the morning.
2:13
But did it look like that later on?
2:14
That's the question, I suppose. I mean, I, I, I think that,
2:17
yeah, broadly speaking, Kemi Begnock has strengthened her
2:19
position in the party partly because her main rival has left
2:22
it, but also because she played yesterday broadly very well.
2:26
She acted decisively. If the if the defection was
2:28
going to happen, then it's she has minimised the damage.
2:32
She took the wind out of their sails.
2:34
If there was any chance of anyone following Robert, that
2:36
seems less likely now. But I do think I'd be interested
2:39
to see what would happen if a politician tried just admitting
2:43
that something wasn't great and that they were sad that it.
2:46
Happened. Stayed in their party.
2:47
Well, well, no. Or, or if somebody left
2:49
admitting that they were a loss, right?
2:51
Because frankly, if if you're if you're Kimmy Babenok and you
2:53
have such a low opinion of Robert Denrick, why was he your
2:55
shadow justice secretary, right? Like he was indisputably 1.
3:00
The most popular shadow cabinet member with the grass roots 2
3:03
really an influence on her own policy thinking since she has
3:06
adopted his policy on the European Convention on Human
3:08
Rights. And three, one of the few
3:10
members of the shadow cabinet who've had any luck getting into
3:12
the media in a very unpromising media environment for the
3:15
Conservatives. Now if he was planning to
3:17
defect, you can still be like well you know better.
3:19
It were done quickly and all the rest of it, whilst acknowledging
3:22
that having a senior member of your shadow front bench leave
3:24
the party to go and join what is in parliamentary terms, a much
3:27
smaller party is a bad thing. But that's not how this really
3:31
works. Everyone has to immediately, the
3:33
moment somebody leaves me like, well, I never liked them anyway.
3:35
And and we're all just supposed to ignore the fact that they
3:38
have promoted them and given them senior positions and all
3:40
the rest of. It, I mean, it's a similar,
3:42
sorry, it's a similar argument, isn't it, that they are putting
3:45
to Genrick, Robert Genrick that if you were so unhappy, you
3:49
know, he's, he was brutal and named colleagues in his speech.
3:54
If you were so unhappy, why don't you stay in and tell us?
3:58
Well, so I, I think my suspicion there is that actually, and this
4:04
is a bad thing for British politics in general and it
4:06
doesn't just apply to the Conservative Party, is that
4:08
there really isn't, if ever there was space in political
4:11
parties for that to happen. Because especially if you look
4:15
at the way that Kimmy Bade not ran the leadership, and this is
4:17
very specific, but she ran as the unity candidate, right?
4:20
And then she populated her shadow cabinet with lots of
4:22
people who were previously in the cabinet from various wings
4:24
of the party. That makes having a full and
4:26
frank interrogation of what went wrong over the past 14 years
4:30
very difficult. If you're overriding priority is
4:34
not to alienate or embarrass anybody.
4:36
And I think that the rise of of social media and and the media's
4:40
appetite for and and expectation of information also doesn't
4:44
help. I remember during the Tory
4:45
leadership contest, I can't remember which show it was on,
4:47
but the host said to me, you know, we watched some clip or
4:49
other and said, yeah, isn't the Conservative Party talking to
4:52
itself? And my response was, is having a
4:55
leadership contest, to whom should it be speaking?
4:57
All right, this is when it's supposed to be working out what
5:00
it says to everyone else. But everything was being
5:02
examined through that external lens.
5:04
And I think that it's unfortunate that a lot of what
5:07
Robert Jenrick said in his criticisms of the Conservative
5:09
Party, there's a lot of truth to it, but he clearly felt that he
5:14
couldn't. There wasn't an adequate forum
5:15
for that inside the party. But there's what you say and
5:17
there's how you say it, right? I mean, you can think all that
5:20
and you can have a, a view that the party hasn't got it wrong.
5:25
A lot of people in the Conservative Party think exactly
5:27
the same. But then they're thinking that
5:29
and they're saying it and then they're saying it in an absolute
5:33
drive by and chucking grenades left, right and centre and
5:37
kicking the dog on the on the way out.
5:38
Which is, I mean, that press conference was it, it was, it
5:42
was quite something. There was no holding back there.
5:45
That wasn't just I'm done with you, you guys have got it wrong
5:48
and I move it on. I mean, Danny Kruger left.
5:52
He's done it in a far more reserved fashion.
5:55
Robert Generate left and it was, I mean, it wasn't in the manner
5:58
in which he wanted to. Like there was a choreography
6:01
there that he wanted and he gets found out and it doesn't happen
6:04
like that. He was setting fire to the house
6:06
on the way out last night. I think that both Kemi and
6:09
Robert could have benefited from being a little bit more like
6:12
Danny. What did?
6:12
You What did you think of Kemi's video?
6:14
The the one the. One in the morning when yeah
6:16
well, I I and a couple of other journalists I spoke to because
6:19
of the blurred background and the fact that it wasn't
6:21
professionally. My first thought was is this
6:23
real yeah, AI right I was just like I just want to check is
6:26
this actually happening yeah and it.
6:28
And then it turned out that it was.
6:29
And I think that clearly, because the Conservative Party
6:32
does have access to production, right?
6:34
It does have a proper camera and a set up and a set for her doing
6:37
things. And so I think the fact that
6:39
that was how it was delivered suggests that if this smoking
6:42
gun came to light, it probably came to light quite quickly.
6:44
Yeah. And they.
6:44
It's like it. Was done at home.
6:45
Wasn't it? Yeah.
6:46
And they really felt that they had to, you know, get it is a
6:48
little bit like, you know, that that clip, that that video from
6:50
President Erdogan during that coup in Turkey when he was
6:52
filming from the plane, there was a real sense of like, right,
6:54
we've got to get on this as quickly as possible.
6:56
And in fairness, it did work. And I suspect that even if he
6:59
hadn't been planning on doing it before, one of the reasons that
7:02
Jenrick was so vociferous in the press conference is because he
7:07
and Nigel Farage needed some way to try and claw back some of the
7:11
points for the day. When despite the fact, you know,
7:14
it's remarkable and that despite the fact that the loss of Robert
7:18
Jenrick and the loss of a member of the judder cabinet is
7:20
objectively a very bad thing for the Tory Party.
7:23
The general consensus is that Kenny Bade not won defection day
7:27
because of how she because of how she managed it and and, and
7:29
she did manage it very well. So I think that's why they were
7:31
pressing back. One, the thing that, you know,
7:33
people in Reform were saying last night was, OK, yeah, she's
7:36
done all right here, but the front pages tomorrow are all
7:38
going to say that very senior Tories left to defect to Reform.
7:42
And lo and behold, every single one of the front pages is Robert
7:46
James left and he's gone to Reform.
7:47
It's not. Didn't Kenny do really well out
7:50
of this? She did well and it's gone down.
7:52
How she performed yesterday and how she bought by the horns has
7:55
gone down well with some Conservative members, some
7:58
councillors, a lot of her MPs, but ultimately the big story.
8:02
But what about the fundamental issues you say?
8:05
It was utterly damning about the Tories, wasn't it?
8:08
It was saying, you know, Britain is broken, broken and you've
8:11
broken it. I mean, slightly ignoring how
8:13
long he's been within the party itself, how damaging is that and
8:18
how many people who remain in the Tory party will be thinking
8:21
he's got a point here? Well it's a 2 edged sword
8:24
because I, you know, there is a clear danger for Nigel Farage
8:27
and being like the Tories cannot be trusted.
8:29
And if you don't believe me, ask any of the Conservative cabinet
8:32
ministers that I've been pleased to welcome into my parliamentary
8:34
party. But again, the danger that it is
8:39
so dangerous to the Tory party because there is a lot of truth
8:41
to it. And one of the people who
8:43
acknowledged that historically was Kemi Batnock.
8:46
During her leadership campaign. She didn't have any specific
8:49
proposals. In fact, that was one of the
8:51
dividing lines to do between her and Robert Jenrick.
8:53
But if you go back and you look at Kemi Batnock's leadership
8:55
campaign, she is saying, why did we talk right and govern left?
8:59
You know, we need a really deep interrogation into what went
9:01
wrong. I'm an engineer and I know how
9:03
to do that. And then it didn't happen and it
9:06
still hasn't happened. And you know, when Priti Patel
9:08
went out on, on, on the media and asked to be thanked for the
9:12
Boris wave. And you know, there's like,
9:14
well, OK, if you're going to be, if you think that the level that
9:18
immigration got to under the Conservative Party is a problem
9:20
that you need to fix, having somebody in your shadow cabinet
9:22
who thinks it's something that's praiseworthy is probably
9:24
something you should fix. Again, nothing happened because
9:26
of that imperative of unity. So it it is a very difficult
9:30
thing for Kemi to do now because she didn't get a mandate for any
9:34
of these big changes in her in her leadership pitch.
9:36
So so where did the strategist go now, given what happened
9:39
yesterday? Because you've got this slight
9:41
contradiction that Kemi Bednock has started to do better, that
9:46
it's widely being said that she did well yesterday, and yet you
9:49
have all of these problems identified by Robert Jenrick
9:52
with potentially many people within the party agreeing with
9:55
him. I.
9:55
Think the strategist is still trying to figure this one out?
9:59
Emy's complete right? One of the problems that the
10:01
Tories have got now is that if you ask most people in the
10:04
street to name anyone on the Tory front bench, I don't think
10:09
they're coming up with a particularly long list for you.
10:12
There aren't many people in the three front benches that have
10:14
name recognition that that are proven media performers that can
10:18
get out there, that can sell their message.
10:19
Robert Genrick was doing that. Whether you agree with him or
10:22
disagree with him, he was someone who was doing that,
10:25
doing that messaging for the Conservative Party.
10:28
One of the things that the Tories have already started
10:31
saying and Labour and Lib Dems have already started pointing
10:34
at, start pointing at Reformers saying oh look, it's either
10:38
Tories 2 point O or it's the Tory B team.
10:41
I think what a lot of people they are set within the
10:44
Westminster bubble sort of forget is that most people are
10:48
not us and are not looking at the news day in day out.
10:52
Most people are getting on with trying to pay their bills and
10:56
they're not looking at the psychodrama of all of these
10:58
things. It matters a lot to all of us.
11:00
It matters a lot to Tory party members and people who write
11:02
their campaign day in day out. Most people don't engage with
11:05
politics until the six months before an election.
11:08
So all this that goes on and you say, oh, look, they've got
11:12
Jonathan Gullis now and they've got Marco Longy's.
11:16
You know, no one knows who many of these people are.
11:18
So as much as you say, oh, it's, it's all the Tories.
11:21
If it's Tories that you don't know and you haven't really
11:23
heard of and you haven't engaged with since the last election
11:25
five years ago and you've forgotten about, it's still
11:28
really the party of Nigel Farage.
11:30
And as long as he's getting out there and doing really well on
11:32
the on the messing, that's really what is cementing itself
11:35
in in people's minds. I mean, I, I think that's true
11:38
of a lot of them. I think that, for example, that
11:40
it was a highway quite I, I, I was added an event with
11:44
relatives who aren't particularly political and what
11:47
they were saying on the day of that defection was, was he the
11:49
tax evasion guy? So I think that there are which.
11:52
May not be the recognition he. Wants which may not be the,
11:54
which may not be the recognition he wants, but but there's more
11:56
than just optics, I think to this, which is that reform might
12:00
actually end up governing the country potentially or in a
12:02
position to govern the country. To do that it needs hundreds of
12:06
people who are capable of being ministers, It needs hundreds of
12:09
people who are capable of being at least possibly good MPs.
12:11
I'm not going to say very good MPs because, you know, none of
12:14
the parties have a generally amazing threshold on that at the
12:16
minute. And it needs people to
12:18
presumably lead quangos, it needs people to lead regulators
12:22
and there. Is to write laws.
12:24
Exactly where The Who are the law officers going to be in a in
12:27
a reform government? So actually I think one of the
12:30
biggest structural challenges facing reform is the personnel
12:33
problem. There should be space in reform
12:36
for hundreds of Robert Jenricks or people like him.
12:39
But the the challenge has always been that, you know, generally
12:44
speaking, if you're a very able person, going into politics
12:46
involves making some big sacrifices, at least in the
12:48
short to medium term. So who are the people who make
12:50
those sacrifices? Well, they tend to be ambitious
12:52
people. Who's the one group of people
12:54
that Nigel Farage does not particularly like having in his
12:56
parties? Ambitious people.
12:58
And you even saw in the press conference he was giving those
13:00
nervous little Robert, don't you dare do anything.
13:03
It's like if that's what you're doing on day one at the press
13:06
conference where you unveil this person, that suggests that this
13:09
is a really quite deep structure.
13:10
So he may not be a shoe in for a reform chancellor Post I Mr.
13:13
Degenerate we've got we've got, I mean, they've got absolutely
13:16
no idea. But generally speaking, the rule
13:18
seems to be that you the one thing you can't do is is
13:21
question Nigel or challenge Nigel or over shadow Nigel or
13:24
even on at least one memorable occasion, succeed him by
13:27
agreement because he will then come back and and and finish you
13:30
off. So to the extent to it.
13:33
Interestingly, Robert represents the 1/3 of the Reform
13:36
parliamentary party that were ministers in Rishi Sunak's
13:38
government. But no, I don't.
13:41
It will be interesting to see how Farage handles him.
13:43
Because if Farage can't accommodate 1 Robert Jenrick, he
13:45
has no prospects of accommodating enough talented
13:47
people to make. As you say that he needs more
13:50
Robert Jenricks. He means more.
13:51
He needs more Robert. Not necessary from the Tories,
13:53
but just in general. But but the but Tory defections
13:56
specifically, it is a double edged sword, isn't it?
13:59
Because you start to look as you say, like Tory Party 2.0 or a
14:03
sort of Poundland Tory party. But at the same time, you need
14:06
that experience and you need people to come across, surely.
14:10
You do. I almost wonder that.
14:13
So whenever anyone talks about defections, about how this is
14:16
going to go down, everyone talks about MPs and what's happening
14:19
in Parliament, who's going to be the next person to to walk the
14:22
floor? And everyone talks about voters
14:24
when it comes to an election and who they're going to vote for.
14:28
But what always gets missed is the bit in the middle.
14:31
And this is like your grassroots membership and parties live and
14:36
die by their membership because as much as you can have someone
14:39
being a media performer and doing great and it comes through
14:42
an election, when it comes through a local election, any
14:44
election, you need people who are willing to walk the pavement
14:49
for you and knock on doors. And the real detrimental effect
14:53
I think here, and this is the thing that's worrying people,
14:55
isn't necessarily in peace, but it's memberships, it's
14:58
counsellors, it's OK. Well, maybe you're not going to
15:03
have a whole lot of Tory members who go and join Reform, but are
15:08
they going to turn up on a rainy Tuesday night to go and a knock
15:12
on a door for you? And if they don't, well, your
15:14
vote's going to, your vote share is going to go down.
15:17
If they don't do it in the local elections, are they going to do
15:19
it come the general election for your MP and all of a sudden you
15:22
get this degradation in support and it's very hard to win any
15:25
election when you don't have those grassroots numbers.
15:28
So when you look more broadly at the sort of, you know, Nigel
15:32
Farage talks it about, you know, realigning the right of British
15:36
politics, where has that been left?
15:38
So the spectre that's haunting the right is the spectre of
15:42
Canada after 1992. So in 1992 the the Canadian
15:47
right split actually on much the same lines that we have.
15:50
The other party was even called Reform and the Progressive
15:54
Conservatives, which were the big Tory party in Canada, went
15:56
down to two seats. And even though they went down
15:59
to two seats, it still took a decade for those parties to
16:03
unite into the Conservative Party of Canada, after which
16:06
point they won. But for that decade the Liberals
16:08
had some very, very easy election victories because
16:11
despite the fact that you had two fairly sizeable right wing
16:14
parties, each of which got a respectable vote, they hated
16:16
each other and therefore there was no prospect of forming a
16:18
government. And I think that that is
16:21
something which both sides are very aware of.
16:25
But the difficulty of it is that actually there is quite a lot of
16:27
bad blood, especially at the senior level between Reform and
16:29
the Tories. But also neither of them have
16:32
policy programs yet. So they've got nothing to build
16:34
a coalition around. And that's why I think we keep
16:37
seeing their differences emphasized because until they
16:39
have discrete things that they stand for, the only thing to
16:43
talk about to their divisions, because otherwise there's no
16:45
point having two of them. So does the right in this big
16:49
mass rely on Labour continuing to U-turn, to make mistakes, to
16:55
look weak? Today.
16:56
I was thinking this yesterday. Remember there was that thing a
16:59
couple of months ago where some people would make the point that
17:03
Keir Starmer has the reverse Midas touch, where everything he
17:07
touches turns to something not great.
17:10
Keep it clean. Keep it clean.
17:12
I've seen this yesterday. We started the day yesterday.
17:16
The new story yesterday was that Elon Musk was all of a sudden
17:21
making big changes to Grokken. This was a a win for Downing
17:26
Street. I was interviewing West of the
17:27
street yesterday morning and he was like absolutely, Prime
17:30
minister's played a blind on this one.
17:32
This is a win for Downing Street where where, you know, no one
17:35
has taken it to Elon Musk like we have.
17:37
Elon Musk wasn't being verbose like he like he normally is.
17:40
Two hours later, no one is talking about that story.
17:43
Got zero coverage yesterday evening.
17:45
Keir Stammer couldn't even get a day's worth of news cycle out of
17:50
that one good story, because all of a sudden events turn against
17:53
him and the whole of the top end of most news programs and the
17:58
front pages of every single newspaper was this story.
18:01
It was the conservative. It was reform.
18:03
And an interesting thing about reform because for
18:06
understandable reasons people tend to to treat reform in the
18:09
Tories as the two right wing parties and focus on the
18:11
internal dynamics of the right. But actually, if you look at
18:14
Reform, they came second in 98 seats in the general election,
18:17
of which 89 are held by Labour, right?
18:20
Labour is also the party in government making lots of
18:22
unpopular decisions. And even the seats that Reform
18:25
UK already has have actually sort of a much bigger level of
18:30
sort of government spending. And if you look at Reform, the
18:31
voters, they don't tend to be small state, low tax.
18:34
They're socially conservative, hardline on law and order, but
18:37
generally quite in favour of public spending.
18:39
One, it's going to be quite interesting to see how reforms
18:42
senior leadership, all of whom are committed Thatcherites,
18:45
adapt to that. We've already seen Nigel Farage,
18:47
for example, flip on the two child welfare limit, but two
18:51
that suggests that actually at the next election, not
18:53
necessarily at all future elections, the Tories and Reform
18:56
might not be each other's primary target necessarily
18:59
because there's quite a few seats in the South, the and the
19:02
east and bits of the Midlands where Labour won because the
19:05
Tories went almost extinct. And you've got nervous Labour
19:08
MPs with many narrow majorities which the Tories could
19:10
potentially take back. And Reform have a very, very
19:13
different map of where their primary attack seats are.
19:16
So there will be some places, and you were talking about
19:18
earlier about grassroots activists, most as important as
19:20
councillors because actually party memberships have drindled
19:23
to almost nothing and there are now some very nervous Tory MPs
19:26
in former heartland counties where there are more MPs than
19:28
councillors after last year. So that will be a a
19:32
battleground. But actually I think that
19:34
focusing purely on the idea of a Tory reform battle ignores the
19:38
fact that both of them, their best prospects for growth in the
19:41
next election, are taking chunks out of Labour.
19:42
And Nigel Farage yesterday saying next week he'll be
19:45
announcing A Labour defection. Yeah.
19:48
I don't know whether that was a joke or not initially.
19:50
No, and there's some movies about who that person is.
19:55
If we paid you money, would you tell us?
19:57
Pay me money, Jackie, I'll tell you anything.
19:59
Like Nigel Farage. Is the master at garnering
20:05
headlines, and he's been. He's been amazing over the last
20:09
six months about when nothing has been going on.
20:12
He's been able to Jack up an event where the cameras turned
20:16
up. He's been able to say something,
20:17
do something and make it happen so that he dominates the
20:22
airwaves. Now that didn't quite happen in
20:24
the sequencing which he wanted to happen with Robert Germet,
20:27
but by Christ, they, they did it yesterday.
20:34
On that point of Tories and and Reform at war with each other.
20:39
It's quite funny talking to senior people in, in Reform then
20:43
I, no, we're, we're, we're just taking them over.
20:45
We're, we're, we're not even taking them over.
20:47
We're just, we're just replacing them.
20:48
That's it. It's almost like the Liberals
20:50
in, in, in the early 20th century.
20:52
It's like, no, the Tories are dead.
20:53
We're just taking them over. Well, some people come, you
20:55
know, come over to us. They need to come to us now
20:58
before the end of the first week of May.
21:00
Otherwise they're, they're not welcome.
21:02
But that's it. We're just, we're just in charge
21:04
now. The other thing that Farrar has
21:06
always been very, very good at is recognizing that as the
21:09
leader of what is normally a small party is that he is at his
21:12
most effective when the big parties are trying to do
21:14
something about him. And so, for example, during the
21:17
UKIP years, he was always talking about, oh, I'm having,
21:21
I, I've spoken to 9 Conservative MPs always, always having these
21:24
conversations. How many of them actually
21:25
defected over that entire period?
21:26
It was 2. But he understands, you know,
21:29
and this was a big distinction between him and Richard Tice
21:31
when Richard Tice was Reform leader, because Richard Tice
21:33
would be like, we need to destroy the Tory party.
21:35
It's a great force for evil and all the rest of it.
21:37
And if nothing else, that meant the Tory party wasn't going to
21:39
try and adapt to you. And last time the Tory Party
21:43
tried to adapt to Nigel Farage, it left the European Union.
21:46
So he is very, very good at this.
21:48
So I would not be surprised if I'm sure they might be a Labour
21:51
defector. But Farage understands that it
21:54
is entirely to his advantage to always have an ambiguous and a
21:57
larger than real implied number of potential defectors.
22:00
So either of you expecting it it to be a a Labour MP or any Tory
22:06
MPs to follow Robert Jenrick? It would be your biggest
22:09
surprise if Fraser Reeves all suddenly turns around tomorrow,
22:11
Says that's it, I'm off. I'm joining reform.
22:15
That'd be that'd be a. Good watch.
22:16
Who? I mean Shabana Mahmood.
22:18
Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
22:19
Oh, they'd. They'd love it.
22:21
Oh, no, Yeah, that'd be great. But yeah, I've come to believe
22:23
that Labour cannot deliver the immigration policy that Britain
22:25
needs. But no, I I've got shockingly
22:28
conservative homes. Labour sources aren't all they
22:30
could be. Looking ahead, predictions are
22:33
always terrible. You know, you see how quickly
22:35
things moved yesterday. The next big test is the is the
22:39
local elections. Who will this play best for?
22:44
I mean, on current polling reform, reform wildly
22:47
outperformed pollster's expectations last time.
22:50
The conservative polling is better, but not that much better
22:54
than it was a year ago. I think this is one of the
22:55
reasons, the sort of the less cynical reasons for looking at
22:59
why supporters Robert Jenrick are a bit jaded about the Chemi
23:02
bounces it's being called, is that Chemi became leader in
23:06
November 24 of a party on 25 points in the polls.
23:08
She then took it to 17% and has now got it to 20%.
23:12
And there there's a slight frustration that she's getting a
23:14
lot of credit for this bounce when net Chemi is still -5
23:18
points from when she took over. And the, the, the devastating
23:22
thing about that set of local elections last year, as I
23:24
alluded to earlier, is the Tories, 2/3 of their counsellors
23:27
and their counsellors are the overwhelming majority of their
23:29
infantry. There are now large parts of
23:31
England where there is functionally no conservative
23:33
ground machine. If that happens again, even it
23:36
or anything like it happens again, even if it is slightly
23:38
better than last year, even if the trajectory is gently
23:41
upwards, you're just eating away at the thing that allows you to
23:46
mobilize your vote. And if you're talking about high
23:49
engagement voters who are prepared to turn out because of
23:51
a national air war media campaign, those are reform
23:54
voters, right? The advantage, which is the
23:56
structural advantage of the Conservative Party, the Labour
23:58
Party, the big parties, is that they have the people who have
24:01
the addresses of all their supporters and we'll go and
24:03
knock them up three times and we'll drive them to the polling
24:06
station if they want it. If that goes, then suddenly the
24:09
fact that Reform has a fairly vestigial membership structure
24:12
at all, even if it has a large number of nominal members,
24:15
counts for a lot less. So what do the Conservatives do
24:17
to stay alive? To survive.
24:22
I mean, you're probably the best one to answer this, but.
24:26
Did they change shape? I mean, so they have to, I mean,
24:29
it's actually incredibly difficult because in the the in
24:31
the short term, if you're looking at a survival general
24:33
election, you want to avoid losing too many votes to the
24:37
Liberal Democrats or prior to the election of Zach Polanski
24:40
and the Greens going in a much left more left wing direction to
24:42
the Greens because there are well heeled Shire seats where
24:44
that was a real danger. But essentially you need to try
24:48
and find a way of reconciling is the fact that you're dependent
24:53
on the votes of the over 50 fives who love public, lots of
24:56
public spending on them. The fact that you are nominally
24:59
a party of lower taxes who's meant to appeal to the
25:02
economically aspirational, which requires you not necessarily
25:06
taking all of their money to hose it at your existing voters.
25:08
And the fact that they do need to just public opinion has
25:11
shifted very far on law and order and things like the
25:14
European Convention on Human Rights.
25:15
And I think one of the missed opportunities of the leadership
25:19
contest, and one of the reasons that that that can be made not
25:21
running as a unity candidate, maybe hit the snooze button on
25:23
this, is that the party is paralysed by the fact that it's
25:26
MPs fundamentally disagree on these questions.
25:28
And until they have that fight, there's a, there's a sort of,
25:32
there's a tendency to elevate unity above everything else.
25:34
But actually the party is divided.
25:36
You can tell because it is almost incapable of making
25:38
decisions and it needs to have that fight and someone needs to
25:40
win. Look at the front bench of the
25:42
Tory party. Do you look at who do you see
25:44
there? You think, OK, that's the person
25:47
now who's going to be able to step up, fill the void on on on
25:50
days when either they're not getting the coverage they want
25:53
or they need to land a blow. This is the person that we're
25:55
going to. Put there is there is they are
25:57
currently auditioning for that position.
25:59
There is not currently another Robert Jenrick.
26:01
There are there are some who are better media performance.
26:03
Claire Coutinho is very good, yeah, but.
26:05
She's been out a bit the last couple of weeks.
26:08
She seems to he's learned Robert Jenrick's patented walking
26:11
towards the camera video technique, one of the earliest
26:13
adopters of the but she's currently in energy and
26:16
important as that brief is in policy terms, it's not something
26:19
that really lets you get the blows in on a day-to-day basis.
26:22
They've put Nick Timothy in injustice now again, he was a
26:25
Home Office spat for a very long time and obviously that
26:28
intersects quite a lot with justice.
26:29
So on policy that might be really good is I've not seen
26:33
much of him as a as a kind of frontline communicator.
26:36
And This is why I think that the party would be better to be
26:38
honest and recognise that Robert Generec is a loss to the party
26:41
because actually it does not have very many people who are
26:44
capable yet or at the moment of doing what he did.
26:47
Paul, just to sum up, does this story mark a really significant
26:52
turning point or a source of intense bit of psychodrama?
26:56
Might you say that is over and done with now?
26:59
It's not over and done with. I think this will be seen as as
27:04
a as a big moment. I don't think it will be seen as
27:06
a turning point. It's really a marker of this is
27:09
where momentum is going at the moment.
27:12
And while there were some people who were thinking for a bit, OK,
27:15
actually maybe reforms, the lead in the poll is, is is coming to
27:20
an asset. Maybe it's slowing down.
27:22
Oh, there's a bit of a chemi bounce.
27:23
She's done quite well the last little while.
27:25
Maybe she's bouncing. Actually, no, the momentum is
27:27
still very much on reform side. We'll be.
27:29
Talking about it again, Henry Paul, thanks very much for
27:31
talking to us. That is it from the forecast
27:34
today. See you next time.