No one, and I mean no one, loves a comeback quite like the British.
From Dunkirk to Dad’s Army, from Tim Henman’s third-set rallies to the sight of Nigel Farage once again commandeering the Brexit battle bus, there is something ineffably British about the plucky revival. The defiance. The bottom lip jutting with stubborn hope. The comeback is stitched into our national tweed.
And here lies the battered, limping Conservative Party, flanked by the smouldering ruins of an 80 seat majority, a lost culture war, Reform on the rise, and Keir Starmer and his band of misfits now pacing the corridors of Downing Street. Things, let’s be honest, have gone suboptimally since Boris departed stage left.
And before you fetch the revisionist ink, let’s say it plainly. Boris never stood a chance. CCHQ had been hijacked. Dougie Smith and his merry cabal of puppeteers had their own designs. When Boris wouldn’t dance to their tune, well, snip snip went the strings.
So yes, the Tories were hijacked. And now, thanks to Nadine Dorries and her bestselling truth bombs, everyone knows it.
But despair not. Because into this miasma of mediocrity strides a man with not just a plan, but a toolkit and a camera crew.
His name is Robert. It ends in Jenrick. And this is how the Tories come back.
I know Rob. He’s sharper than your average minister by a country mile, fifteen, probably twenty IQ points north of the mean, and twice as eloquent. He’s got that elusive Thatcherite blend of moral conviction and killer instinct. He’s principled, relentless, and surgically effective. And by George, the camera loves him. I told him recently that if this politics thing didn’t work out, he could walk into a job hosting Crimewatch. He laughed. But I was right. He’s brilliant on camera. More importantly, he understands the digital age.
This is a man who studied at Cambridge, became a King’s Counsel, and now spends his weekends ferreting through illegal car boot sales to recover stolen hammers. You quite literally could not make it up.
I refer you to today’s Telegraph, and you should read it, if only for the image of Jenrick in a muddy Romford field at some ungodly hour, tieless but tenacious, chasing down one hundred and fifty thousand pounds worth of pilfered tools with Essex police and a builder from Instagram. That wasn’t a stunt. That was Batman with a bar exam. That was Edmund Burke with a GoPro.
Meanwhile, back in the cosy confines of Portcullis House, the shadow cabinet is busy drafting lessons learned memos while Britain burns under Starmer. Not Rob. Rob is out there, boots on the ground, camera rolling, algorithms humming.
Two hundred million views on X. Twenty million on Facebook. And eighty five percent of the audience is British. This isn’t clickbait. This is comms warfare, and Jenrick is winning.
Kemi. Poor Kemi. Stranded atop the crater of local election defeats, clinging to a Policy Exchange strategy memo like it’s a flotation device. Her approval rating is zero. Not a metaphor. Not a typo. Just pure, unfiltered arithmetic.
And against that backdrop, Jenrick is prosecuting the real fight, against sentencing absurdities, creeping censorship, and the sanctimonious sludge of bureaucratic groupthink.
Let’s talk about Rob’s recent wins. The CPS flirted with a backdoor blasphemy law. Jenrick called it out. They backed down. The Sentencing Council tried to sneak through racially divisive guidelines. Rob torpedoed it. They pulled the plug.
This isn’t noise. This is victory. This is guerrilla governance. And it’s working.
You hear whispers, of course. He’s on manoeuvres. And why shouldn’t he be. The Tories are staring down political Armageddon and some pearl clutchers want to criticise a man for sketching out a counter offensive.
Let me ask you this. Who do you want leading the charge. Someone who can negotiate with Reform, unite the patriots, dominate the digital battlefield. Or someone who still thinks Facebook is where you post holiday snaps.
The party is almost out of time. The base is incandescent. Voters are eyeing Farage like he’s the last pint before closing time. And in that deliciously blunt leaked recording, Jenrick said it. We need to bring the coalition together.
That means Reform. That means unity. That means leadership. He is, in short, the Great British PAC’s dream.
This isn’t about ego. It’s not about positioning. It’s about survival. It’s about action, belief, and purpose. It’s about a Conservative Party that still has a shot, if and only if it’s led by someone who actually wants to fight.
So here it is. My message to the party, to the country, and to those still clutching the faint hope that we can rescue Britain from the creeping managerialism and cultural malaise that’s hollowing it out.
Let Rob lead.
Because while others are drafting white papers, he’s writing the next chapter.
And it might just be the comeback we’ve all been waiting for.
By Claire Bullivant
Rachel Reeves has admitted that Labour are taking us back into the EU. Rachel Reeves has said that whatever deal is struck it will not be a one off. (Guardian)
No. No. No. No. No.
Jenrick’s Damascene conversion is too rapid to be believable.
He was a Cameronite on entry to Parliament. He was mentored by Anna Soubry, the arch-remoaner. He was pro immigration. And then, when he senses the wind has changed, suddenly he’s not.
The Tories’ playbook re-runs the same play over and over again – when in trouble in the polls, or in opposition, get a right-wing leader in espousing right-wing policies and ideas. Then, once in power, the wets thwart him/her and make sure they do nothing but nanny state legislation. Then… defenestrate the leader via the 1922 procedures and push two wets onto the membership (or have one stand down and then hold no membership vote at all).
The Tories need to be consigned to the dustbin of history. The challenge now is to stop Reform being infiltrated in the same way by Lib Dems in blue rosettes.