Robert Jenrick defects to Nigel Farage's Reform UK after Tory sacking

Robert Jenrick has defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, hours after he was sacked by the Tory party.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch kicked the former shadow justice secretary out of the party on Thursday morning due to “irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect in a way designed to be as damaging as possible” to his fellow Tories.

During a special Reform UK announcement on Thursday evening, Farage announced that Jenrick was in fact joining his party.

The Reform leader said he would “buy Kemi lunch next week and say thank you”.

Speaking of his defection, Jenrick said he could “not kid [himself] any more”, adding that the Conservative Party “don’t have the stomach for the radical change this country needs”.

Badenoch has since doubled down on her decision to fire Jenrick. She told reporters it was something that she “had to do”.

“I sacked him from the shadow cabinet and removed the whip because he wasn’t just planning to leave, he was planning to torch the Conservative party by putting out comments and allegations that would have been very, very bad,” the Tory leader said.

“Once I discovered that, I had no other choice but to remove him from the party.”

She added that Jenrick was “Nigel Farage’s problem now”.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Keir Starmer questioned why it took “so long” for Badenoch to sack Jenrick, who he accused of making “toxic comments to try and divide our country”.

It comes as Farage announced Lord Malcolm Offord as Reform UK’s first Scottish leader earlier on Thursday.

The former Tory minister, who defected late last year, has been chosen to lead the party into the Holyrood election in May.