The Conservative leader has faced months of questions over his ambitions, including whether he planned to defect to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – but Badenoch made a move first, as Whitehall editor Kate Devlin and political editor David Maddox report

Robert Jenrick ruled out a move to Reform UK just weeks before he was sacked due to "irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect'' from the Conservative Party.…

Reform leader Nigel Farage said ‘of course’ he has had conversations with the now former senior Tory Jenrick

The Reform UK leader had described the Tory MP as a ‘fraud’ as recently as last summer

The Conservative leader has faced months of questions over his ambitions, including whether he planned to defect to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – but Badenoch made a move first, as…

Robert Jenrick has defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK after being sensationally sacked from the shadow cabinet and suspended from the Conservative party. Lucy Hough speaks to…

Lucy Hough speaks to head of national news Archie Bland

Nigel Farage thanks Tory leader for delivering Robert Jenrick to Reform ‘on a plate’ after firing him – and boasts of a Labour defector to come

The Conservative leader said Nigel Farage’s party was ‘taking away’ her problems by welcoming Robert Jenrick

The Conservative leader said Reform are ‘taking people who are repeatedly sacked from government’.

Conservative leader thanks Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, for ‘doing my spring cleaning for me’

Nigel Farage’s warning that MPs have until May – the date of the English local elections – has prompted fears of more departures, write Kate Devlin and David Maddox

Jenrick was sacked by the Conservative leader this week hours before he defected to Nigel Farage’s party