{"id":408714,"date":"2026-01-15T12:18:30","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T12:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/408714\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T12:18:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T12:18:30","slug":"robert-jenrick-sacked-by-tories-for-plotting-to-defect-live-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/408714\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Jenrick sacked by Tories for ‘plotting to defect’ – live updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

A massive mess for the Tories – but possibly preferable to the alternativepublished at 11:52 GMT<\/p>\n

11:52 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent<\/p>\n

Conservative MPs are reeling at this development. One MP just told me there is an eerie quiet in the party\u2019s WhatsApp groups.<\/p>\n

Many MPs will already have left Parliament, and London, for the weekend.<\/p>\n

One MP I\u2019ve just spoken to, who was generally aligned with Robert Jenrick, was adamant that Jenrick had merely been keeping his options open when it came to Reform. <\/p>\n

They said his preferred option was to wait for the elections in May, and then see if there was a possibility of him becoming Conservative leader first.<\/p>\n

We will have to see what evidence Kemi Badenoch has, and what Jenrick says, to assess whether that MP is simply being na\u00efve.<\/p>\n

A senior Conservative MP said to me in the immediate aftermath of Badenoch\u2019s announcement that this was “a massive mess” for their party.<\/p>\n

That feels inarguable.<\/p>\n

But it will take time to work out whether Badenoch triggering this mess was preferable to the alternative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A massive mess for the Tories – but possibly preferable to the alternativepublished at 11:52 GMT 11:52 GMT…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-408714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}