Robert Jenrick: Tory attack dog or Badenoch's big problem?

"Tory eyes" are being drawn, "not for the first time" to shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, "one-time leadership rival" to Kemi Badenoch.

On the day this week that Badenoch ran through "her greatest hits" in a "set-piece speech attacking Labour's 'job tax'", the Tory grassroots on social media were clearly "more taken by Jenrick, as he tore into his opposite number, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, over the 'two-tier' Sentencing Council fiasco", said Richard Vaughan in The i Paper.

It was the latest of several "sharp performances" from Jenrick since losing the Tory leadership contest. And his "apparent omnipresence" has led to whispers within the party that the shadow justice secretary is, in Westminster parlance, "on manoeuvres".

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'Unusually robust, no backing down'

Since the election, Jenrick has been "the most effective campaigner on the Tory benches", said Tom Jones in The Critic, "and not by a matter of inches, but miles". Being in opposition can be a "thankless task" but Jenrick can "actually point to successes" – not just on the two-tier justice issue but also in the "storm over grooming gangs", where he was "at the front", calling for gang leaders to receive whole-life sentences.

Some of the reasons for Jenrick's success are "easily discerned and easily replicable: intensity of effort, combined with media mastery". But the shadow cabinet could learn from his "unusually robust" and unapologetic delivery style that allows "little hand-wringing and certainly no backing down".

Indeed, while Team Kemi appears to be trying to "make a virtue out of silence", Jenrick has become "everything Kemi was elected to be," said Tim Stanley in The Telegraph. There's a lesson for us all there: "if you ever apply for a job and don't get it, just show up to work the next day and pretend that you did".

'An alternative leadership'

It might be more accurate to say that Jenrick is "running an alternative leadership", said Peter Franklin in UnHerd. In opposition, there's not much a "Tory boss" can do, other than "develop new ideas and communicate them" and, "on that front, he's leaving his colleagues in the dust".

The question for Badenoch now is what to do about it. "If she sacks him, she could precipitate her own downfall – or, more disastrously for the Tories, his defection to Reform UK". Instead, she could "confine him to his own brief" but, although all Tory MPs have already been told not to sound off on social media, "Jenrick won't be easily silenced". Her best course of action, then, is to promote him to deputy leader. Give Jenrick "the job and the mission of overhauling both policy and communications" and "make his successes her successes".

Jenrick probably does still want to be Tory leader, said Giles Dilnot on ConservativeHome but that, in itself, is not "the smoking gun" his critics might hope for. The answer to the question of what Jenrick is "really up to" is simple enough: he's "spoiling for a fight with Labour".

He is "energised" by targeting the government, isn't afraid to take on Reform, and is "cheerfully revelling" in being "the party's attack dog". But what the Conservatives really need is "the whole shadow-cabinet pack hunting efficiently".