Late on the afternoon of Thursday the 15th of January, the former Conservative Party leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick joined to the Reform Party. The poach was an undeniable coup for Farage’s insurgent operation, and yet its execution was a communications car crash. For a party with a penchant for garnering press coverage, the switch of the high-profile Conservative was botched from the very beginning. Put simply, they lost the element of surprise!

Robert Jenrick was ejected before he defected. After a copy of his planned defection speech was seemingly left lying around, Kemi Badenoch seized the opportunity to remove her shadow Secretary of State for Justice from the party. While much of media sought to depict the move as a signal of strength by the Conservative leader, it was in truth a humiliating predicament dealt with in the only manner left available to her. What choice did she have but to exile her plotting cabinet colleague? Why tolerate an internal saboteur poised to detonate at a moment of maximum damage, when she could defuse the threat there and then?

Kicking Jenrick out of the Conservative Party deprived the Reform Party of the perfect news cycle. After announcing the support of the former Conservative Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi earlier in the week, the strategic move would have been to have kept Jenrick’s defection in the back pocket. Staggered correctly, the announcements could have created a rolling narrative of momentum — first a senior endorsement, then a frontbench defection — each development amplifying the last. Instead of compressing two significant moments into a single, chaotic burst, Reform might have dominated the political conversation across multiple weeks, reinforcing the impression of a steady Conservative haemorrhage to inflict maximum damage on their biggest opponent on the right. By losing control of the timing, they surrendered not only the element of surprise, but the opportunity to choreograph a sustained show of ascendancy.

As a PhD student researching the history of MP defectors we’re certainly living through exciting times. This will doubtless prove one of the more amusing episodes in the history of party switching. Whether the move ultimately pays off for Jenrick, well that remains to be seen…