Robert Jenrick must do more

When Kemi Badenoch took to the floor during GB News’s TV Q&A on Thursday evening, the atmosphere in the room climbed a notch. Robert Jenrick had just finished his pitch to the party and handled questions well, but it was clear even before the audience rated their leadership candidates that it was Badenoch the majority were there to see. While Jenrick’s ECHR rhetoric received applause, almost every sentence of his rival’s opening pitch was met with cheers. If the audience was representative of the wider Tory membership, Badenoch is on track for an easy win in the leadership race. 

‘I don’t think this is representative of the Conservative party at large,’ Jacob Rees-Mogg remarked after the event. ‘It was very interesting that the audience basically hadn’t changed its mind. It’s essentially a London audience. A number were from the Cities of London and Westminster, which I was chairman of so this association I know very well, but it’s not your typical Conservative association.’