The man with the match, the party with the petrol by Jemma Norman

Robert Jenrick’s jump from the Conservatives to Reform UK is being treated like a plot twist. In truth, it is the logical final scene of a drama that has been badly written for years. He did not just defect; he confirmed what many voters already suspect, that the Conservative Party is no longer a political home but a transit lounge. The more interesting question is not why Jenrick left, but why staying would have made sense. When a senior figure decides that Nigel Farage’s insurgent outfit offers more future than Britain’s most successful governing party, something has gone profoundly wrong. And that something is not merely Farage’s talent for disruption, but the Conservatives’ growing talent for self-sabotage.

Nigel Farage is not a policy wizard. He is a mood merchant. He sells grievance, identity, and the intoxicating idea that politics should feel like a pub argument rather than a spreadsheet. Yet he understands something the Conservatives keep forgetting: politics is emotional before it is rational. Farage offers his supporters belonging, clarity, and enemies. The Conservatives offer leadership contests, internal purges, and talking points that sound like they were written by a risk assessment committee. Farage does not need to build a credible government-in-waiting. He only needs to look confident while his opponents look confused. Every defection becomes proof of momentum. Every Tory meltdown becomes free advertising.

Enter Kemi Badenoch, the latest custodian of a crumbling brand. She is clever, combative, and ideologically sharp, but leadership is not a debating competition. It is an exercise in reassurance, discipline, and narrative control. Badenoch has yet to show that she can unify factions that increasingly resemble rival tribes. Her instinct is confrontation, not coalition. That plays well on social media and party conference stages, but it is disastrous when your party is already haemorrhaging credibility. Voters do not crave another internal culture war. They crave the sense that someone, somewhere, is actually in charge. Instead, they see a party that fires first and explains later, that panics when leaks appear and that treats dissent as treason rather than diagnosis.

Jenrick’s defection is less about ideology than about oxygen. Reform UK is where the noise is. It is where cameras turn, where outrage is rewarded, where certainty replaces nuance. The Conservatives, by contrast, resemble a once-grand department store with flickering lights and “closing down” signs taped over the windows. Badenoch may argue that ruthless discipline is necessary to rebuild authority. But authority cannot be rebuilt by looking brittle. When senior figures leave hours after being sacked, it does not project strength. It projects chaos with a press office.

Farage, meanwhile, barely has to lift a finger. He positions himself as the anti-establishment outsider, even as he becomes the gravitational centre of the right. His skill is not strategy but timing. He waits for the Conservatives to wound themselves, then offers sanctuary to the bleeding. He understands that modern politics is less about programmes than about performance. He plays the role of the straight-talking rebel while the Conservatives audition endlessly for the role of “competent adult” and keep forgetting their lines.

So who is destroying the Conservative Party? The honest answer is both, but not equally. Farage is the match. The Conservatives are the petrol station. Without decades of internal contradictions, broken promises, leadership churn, and ideological identity crises, Reform UK would be a footnote. Farage exploits weakness; he does not create it. Badenoch inherited a disaster, but she is not yet proving to be the architect of its repair. Her sharpness may energise the base, but it does little to calm the wider electorate, which is tired, suspicious, and allergic to drama.

Jenrick’s leap is therefore not a betrayal of conservatism. It is an indictment of a party that no longer knows what it wants to conserve. Until the Conservatives decide whether they are a serious governing force or a permanent audition panel for the loudest personality in the room, defections will continue. Farage will keep smiling. And voters will keep watching the slow, undignified demolition of a party that once defined British politics, now struggling to define itself.