Nigel Farage should secure the defection of Robert Jenrick from the Conservative Party and consider appointing him as his shadow chancellor, senior Reform UK figures have suggested.
Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, was said by Tories colleagues to be “down” after a resurgence in Kemi Badenoch’s leadership. He lost the leadership contest to her last November and the Tory leader is seen by colleagues to have performed well in recent months.
A senior Reform source said: “It’s not going to happen soon. But the best thing for Robert, and for Nigel, would be if they joined forces sometime between now and the next election. Robert clearly wants to, and he’d put himself in a strong position to go to the Treasury as chancellor if he did.”
Another senior figure in Reform UK said Jenrick’s defection would be considered a coup in part because it would help destabilise the Tories.
Farage has denied claims in the Financial Times that he told Tory donors he expected a deal or a merger with Reform UK before the general election. He said of the Conservatives: “After 14 years of dishonesty and lies they should never be forgiven. The idea I’d work with them is ludicrous. They betrayed my trust in 2019 and we will ensure they cease to be a national party in May.”
Jenrick told Times Radio: “My leader Kemi Badenoch said there won’t be a deal. Nigel Farage has said there won’t be a deal. So there won’t be a deal.”
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He said of his personal prospects: “It wasn’t very long ago that I was running to be leader of the Conservative Party so I’m not going anywhere.”
Colleagues of Jenrick said he had been more downbeat in recent weeks after Badenoch appeared to solidify her leadership. Shadow cabinet ministers increasingly believe she could survive local elections in May even if they go badly for the Conservatives, provided the results are mixed on the night.
However, they said they thought it unlikely that Jenrick would leave the Tories, highlighting his relative youth. He is 43 and colleagues think he could still lead the Tories one day.
Reform declined to comment on whether Jenrick is a defection target.
Farage has yet to appoint a shadow chancellor. There are already several candidates vying for the role including Zia Yusuf, the head of policy, and Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader. Farage has been clear that he wants to wait until closer to the election to appoint his top team so he can ensure he has the widest pool of talent available.
One ally of Farage said that the Reform UK leader was “badly burnt” by his experience in 2019, when his Brexit Party stood aside in Tory held seats. It paved the way for the election of Boris Johnson with an 80-strong majority. Farage is said to have felt “badly treated” because Johnson did not follow through on private assurances that he would give him a peerage.
A source close to Jenrick said the suggestion he was “downbeat” was “rubbish”.
“I wish he was downbeat,” they said. “He’s wearing the team down with his constant ideas for his next campaign. He genuinely enjoys his brief — it’s hard not to have fun opposing Calamity Lammy.”
Recent polling suggests that if the Tories and Reform merged they would have 45 per cent of the vote between them, enough to win an outright majority. However Anthony Wells, the global head of politics and elections at YouGov, said that Reform currently stands to win 71 seats from the Conservatives.
He said: “That itself will be the challenge to the terms of any deal, standing down in Tory-held seats would mean Reform UK not contesting a large number of seats that they would otherwise expect to win. But it would likely be just as difficult for the Tories to agree to stand down in seats that they currently hold and have sitting MPs for.”
