Badenoch sacks Conservative leader over defection plan

Britain’s Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has sacked one-time leadership rival Robert Jenrick from her senior policy team and suspended him from the party.

Badenoch announced this on Thursday, January 15, 2026, saying Jenrick was plotting to defect.

Badenoch wrote on X: “I have sacked Robert Jenrick from the Shadow Cabinet, removed the whip and suspended his party membership with immediate effect.

“I was presented with clear, irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect in a way designed to be as damaging as possible to his Shadow Cabinet colleagues and the wider Conservative Party.

“The British public are tired of political psychodrama and so am I. They saw too much of it in the last government, they’re seeing too much of it in THIS government.

“I will not repeat those mistakes.“

She did not say which party he was planning to defect to, and Jenrick had yet to speak on the development.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist Reform UK party, told Reuters the two men had held discussions about him joining the party.

Jenrick lost to Badenoch in the 2024 contest to lead the main opposition party after their crushing national election defeat and was then, in an effort to reunite the party, given the role of justice spokesperson.

Jenrick has used that position to build a personal profile on key issues like immigration and crime that many saw as a platform for a future challenge to Badenoch’s leadership, as the Conservatives sought to counter a dramatic loss of support to Reform UK.

The Conservatives are Britain’s oldest and most successful political party, governing for 32 of the last 46 years.

But their reputation has been badly damaged by a 14-year spell in power that included the hugely divisive Brexit referendum, several chaotic leadership changes and market crises, culminating in the party’s worst electoral defeat in its history.

The Star