Good morning. Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs today and, given her enthusiasm for talking about trans issues – her Commons performance on this yesterday got rave reviews in rightwing circles – it is hard to imagine that she won’t want to revist this at noon today. As the Today programme’s interview with Green co-leader Adrian Ramsay showed this morning, UK politics is still stuck with the ‘can a woman have a penis?’ question. (More on that later.) But there is another question on the table this morning about whether two binary opposites are compatible. Can you be a Conservative if you’ve got a Nigel Farage?
This has revived as an issue as a result of a good scoop by Sam Coates at Sky News. He has obtained a recording of Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary and runner-up in the last Tory leadership contest, saying that, if the Conservative party has not seen off the threat from Reform UK by the time of the next election, “one way or another” the two parties will have to form some sort of electoral coalition.
Jenrick made the remarks when speaking to a UCL Conservative association dinner in late March. According to Coates’ report, Jenrick said:
[Reform UK] continues to do well in the polls. And my worry is that they become a kind of permanent or semi-permanent fixture on the British political scene. And if that is the case – and I say, I am trying to do everything I can to stop that being the case – then life becomes a lot harder for us, because the right is not united.
And then you head towards the general election, where the nightmare scenario is that Keir Starmer sails in through the middle as a result of the two parties being disunited. I don’t know about you, but I’m not prepared for that to happen.
I want the right to be united. And so, one way or another, I’m determined to do that and to bring this coalition together and make sure we unite as a nation as well.
No other member of the shadow cabinet has been quite this explicit about the need for a Tory/Reform UK coalition. Jenrick qualified this by saying that he did not want Reform UK to become a permanent fixture of British politics, but there is almost no one in Westminster politics who thinks Farage’s party is going to fizzle out before the next election, and so when Jenrick talks circumstances where a coalition would be needed, he is not floating some outlandish hypothetical; he is talking about what he expects to happen.
And Jenrick is not just any member of the shadow cabinet. According to the latest ConservativeHome survey, he is by far the most popular shadow cabinet minister with party members, and colleagues believe is is actively preparing for another bid for the leadership.
Kemi Badenoch has ruled out doing an electoral deal with Reform UK. But there are many people in the party who think that her position is unrealistic and who would agree with Jenrick, or with Greg Smith, the shadow business minister, who said last month that at the next election the Tories and Reform UK might have “play nicely” together.
In his story, Coates quotes a “source close to Jenrick” saying: “Rob’s comments are about voters and not parties. He’s clear we have to put Reform out of business and make the Conservatives the natural home for all those on the right.” But this is just an attempt to deny that Jenrick said what he did; the meaning of his on-the-record comments is clear.
Labour and the Conservatives are both saying that, if Badenoch does not sack Jenrick, she will be implying that she agrees with him. Ellie Reeves, the Labour party chair, said:
Kemi Badenoch needs to urgently come clean as to whether she backs her shadow justice secretary in doing grubby deals with Reform behind the electorate’s back or if she will rule it out.
If she disagrees with Robert Jenrick, how can her leadership have any credibility whilst he remains in her shadow cabinet?
We know Kemi Badenoch has opened the door to deals with Reform at a local level, which Labour has categorically ruled out and now Robert Jenrick has let the cat out the bag. Between the Tories who decimated the NHS and Reform who want to make people pay for routine treatments, it’s a recipe for chaos and would be a disaster for Britain.
And Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said:
The cat is out of the bag, senior Conservatives are plotting a grubby election deal with Nigel Farage.
Kemi Badenoch should sack Robert Jenrick now if she’s serious about ruling out a pact with Reform. Anything less would show she’s either too weak to sack him or that she agrees.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.15am: Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, gives evidence to the Commons transport committee.
9.45am: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, chairs a meeting in Glasgow on democratic values.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
Also, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is in Washington for the IMF spring meetings. And David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is hosting talks on Ukrain in London. Martin Belam is covering this on our Ukraine live blog.
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