Robert Jenrick ’s attempts to be the champion of the right in his battle to become leader of the Conservatives marks the latest in a long political journey for the former Cabinet minister. Despite being only 42, the MP for Newark could be confused as a veteran of the Tory party given his profile and ministerial CV, which has witnessed him reach the heights of the Cabinet while in his thirties, to the lows of ordering a Mickey Mouse mural be painted over in a centre for asylum seeker children. But for those within the party, it is his passage from being a well-liked moderate on the Conservative benches to his more recent “Suella-lite” persona that has been the more perplexing.
“He has definitely been on a journey. He’s regarded as a bit of a puzzle now,” one former Cabinet minister told i . “Before his time in the Home Office, he was seen as sensible, pragmatic and fairly centrist.
He was very good as the Communities Secretary, but he seems to have been radicalised by his time in the Home Office – or perhaps his exposure to Suella!” It is a view that is widely shared among Tories and proven by the fact that two of Suella Braverman’s former supporters, Danny Kruger and Sir John Hayes, have rowed in behind Jenrick instead of the former home secretary. During his time at the Home Office, friends said he was increasingly shocked at the scale of immigration, and the inability of the department to control the issue. The experience apparently drove him to a much m.