Announcement comes after Kemi Badenoch sacked shadow justice secretary over evidence of defection plot
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Robert Jenrick has defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK after being sacked from the Conservative shadow cabinet, calling his former party “rotten” and urging more MPs to jump ship.
Jenrick, who stood for the Tory leadership against Kemi Badenoch, said the Conservative party in Westminster “isn’t sorry, it doesn’t get it, it hasn’t changed, it won’t change, it can’t change” before launching into a broadside against his former colleagues, including Mel Stride and Priti Patel.
“In opposition, it is easy to paper over these cracks, but the divisions and delusions are still there,” he said at a hastily reorganised press conference with Farage in Westminster on Thursday. “I can’t in good conscience stick with a party that has failed so badly.”
