Name: Why has Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch sacked Robert Jenrick? | BBC Newscast
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T17:05:07.000Z
Duration: 32 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

When the News broke at 11 o' clock on Thursday morning that Kemi Badenok was sacking Robert Jenrick over claims he was planning a high profile defection to another political party, Westminster was so agog, we thought we would assemble all the newscasters to do a breaking news episode, which was live on the BBC News channel and live streamed on BBC Sounds.

And we have now turned it into a classic breaking news episode of newscast for you to listen to.

Do you want to give me your instant reaction to this news?

Well, I think it is both unsurprising that there's evidence that Robert Jenrick had been thinking about making a big, dramatic move to reform.

I think it's really notable that Kemi Badenoch thought, right, let's shove him out before that happens.

And essentially she has kneecapped someone who was seen both as a rival to her and internally, and

also somebody who might have been someone to do big damage if he'd gone across to a rival party.

I think it's a sign of her increasing confidence, but

also if the party really had found incontrovertible evidence, and

we'll see if we can get our sticky paws on any of that incontrovertible evidence, then in a way, she had no choice but to act in this way.

And we'll dig into all of that over the next few minutes.

We're also joined by Alex Forsyth, who's at Westminster.

Well, one word in the word of Chris Mason.

No, I'd agree with everything that Laura said.

I think the decision by Kemi Badenock to act as she did came somewhat out of the blue, despite the fact.

The background to this is that the rumors around Robert Jenrick possibly defecting to Reform had been swirling for some time.

So this is clearly Kemi Badenoch trying to cement and state her authority on the party.

But it leaves huge questions about what now for Robert Jenrick and what that means for the Conservatives and, and

also possibly Reform uk, if he does decide to head in that direction, which at the moment we don't know because we haven't heard from him.

And chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman has joined the chat.

You've got 30 seconds to give us your big pitch for why this is such an important and exciting story.

Because it's about the future of the British right.

It's not just about Robert Jenrich's future and what party he ends up in.

It's about whether the man who nearly became Conservative Party leader just over a year ago is going to decide that the Conservative Party is old news and that the future of right wing politics in this country is Reform UK now clearly can be.

Badenoch has done a very good job of framing the backdrop to that possible decision.

But if he still does make that decision, and

he has a lot less leverage and has holds a lot fewer cards than he did a few hours ago, but

And Laura, we'll dig into the timeline of this and some more of the implications, but

there is one person we have not heard from at all yet, and

Yes, there is silence from Robert Genrick's camp, so far as I'm sure Alex and Henry both have done as well.

I've been messaging people close to him, either there's been nothing back, or I sent a message to someone I'm paraphrasing, say something like, goodness me.

We haven't heard from him and it's difficult to know how he will respond because, as Henry said, the embarrassment of him being shoved out for allegedly leaving evidence of his plot lying around leaves him with less leverage.

What's his choice other than to go to Reform now?

Because there's no home for him in the Tory party as we understand it.

He's also been booted out and lost the whip.

So this is not just a question of, oh, I'm sacking him as a shot, it's not a demotion, it's out.

You know, he's been properly kneecapped by Cami Badenoch or it will be very interesting to see how he responds.

But as Henry says, however, Robert Generic decides to manage the next couple of days.

Who knows whether or not he'll decide to turn up on a red chair on Sunday morning, for example, or whether one would be well available.

of when he quit as Immigration Minister because he does have form for doing dramatic things.

He quits the former government because he was so frustrated by what he saw as failures in the Home Office, as not being radical or bold enough on immigration.

You know, he's somebody who does have a degree of political courage without question, but

as Henry says, the question is, what's he going to do next.

At the moment, he's got fewer cards in his hand to play because frankly, he's been found out and done in.

However, in the medium to long term, that might not matter because if somebody who's an experienced, savvy media performer, love him or hate him, somebody who does stunts like chasing fair dodgers on the tube, creating a huge public conversation, he's good at grabbing headline.

And so if somebody like that does go across to Reform uk, he will be an asset to them.

The question about Cami Badenoch's leadership, she's been more secure in the last couple of months, without question, but

there was always a sense that if after May and those local elections go terribly for the Tories, that might have been Generic's moment.

If he's sitting in a different party, you know that ain't going to happen.

But it is a big story about the fight on the right.

So the situation at 6pm tonight could be really quite different.

Here's the situation at 1:43 on Thursday afternoon.

And this is how the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, made her announcement about what she was doing about Robert Jenrick's future.

She did it in a video that she posted on X.

And so here is a little excerpt of what she said this morning.

I removed the Conservative Whip from Robert Jenrick after dismissing him from the Shadow Cabinet.

I was very sorry to be presented with clear, irrefutable evidence, not just that he was preparing to defect, but

he was planning to do so in the most damaging way possible to the Conservative Party and his Shadow Cabinet colleagues.

It is my responsibility to protect our party.

And faced with that information, I took the only decision that any responsible leader could.

Basically, you could interpret every single word of that statement in different ways.

Alex, do we have any idea what this evidence actually was?

I'm seeing speculation on social media that it was.

It was a resignation speech that was left lying around.

Or a letter of some description left lying around.

They said that there was, like, Kevin Hollenreich, who is the Conservative Party chair, was talking about it and he didn't give huge amounts of detail about the specifics of what piece of paper was seen or wasn't.

But the clear indication that he gave was that it was obvious.

It was kind of kicking around I don't know what CCHQ Conservative Central Head office for people to get their hands on and take a look at.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Why has Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch sacked Robert Jenrick? | BBC Newscast

episode

sort

situation

evidence