Robert Jenrick promises a ‘new Conservative party’

The Tory front runner was third up in Birmingham. Throughout this race, Robert Jenrick has sought to position himself as someone with the polish of David Cameron and the politics of Nigel Farage. His speech today was very much in that vein: a staunchly right-wing message centred around delivering a ‘new Conservative party’. Like Cameron in 2005, he talks of change: but change, he would argue, of a very different nature to hug-a-hoodie modernisation. 

Jenrick’s speech began with a neat bridging exercise: talking of his father’s work in a metal foundry as a way of referencing the Iron Lady. He was keen to draw comparisons between 1974 and 2024 – with him as the new Thatcher, rescuing his party and country from the politics of decline. The Conservatives, he said, must be the ‘trade union for the working people’, ordinary men and women for whom there is ‘no lobby demanding their so-called rights’.