The defection of Sir Jake Berry, a former Tory chairman, to Reform was a genuine shock last night.
As Kemi Badenoch prepared to give a major speech just hours later on welfare reform, it left her looking increasingly lost and irrelevant.
Already, there were questions over why she had chosen today of all days to deliver a major speech when the news was very much focused on migration and the mini-summit between Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, who would be grabbing the attention.
But with Sir Jake’s defection, there would only ever be one subject anybody would ask her about at her press conference: “Who is leaving next?”
While he was not the first ex-Tory MP to be converted to Nigel Farage’s cause, he is without doubt the most substantial and significant to do so. And he will not be the last.
He also represented a very different type of Conservative to join Reform. Figures such as Lee Anderson, Marco Longhi, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, David Jones and Anne Marie Morris were all on the hardcore Brexiteer right wing of the party, but that is not the case with Sir Jake.
Last time he spoke to The Independent, he was at the launch event for Tom Tugendhat’s leadership bid. Tugendhat supposedly represented the type of Tories who would rather vote Lib Dem than Farage.
Sir Jake had been a Remainer during the Brexit referendum; he was also a Boris Johnson loyalist and served under Liz Truss. He is essentially a career politician, someone who was an MP for 14 years, sought ministerial office, was not on the right of the party, and had been a Tory for 30 years.
His admission, “I know what was wrong, I was there”, as he defected, was a pretty scathing attack on his former party.
A friend of Sir Jake’s messaged The Independent last night to say: “He followed his heart.”
A cynic might suggest that his heart was telling him he wanted to be an MP again, and winning back the seat he lost last year would be more easily achieved by standing for Reform.
But this does mark a significant moment. If Farage is now attracting not only the ideologues but also career politicians who want to join a party because it improves their chances of being elected, then the mood is changing.
Sir Jake’s departure tells people, more than any other defection, that the centre-right party most likely to win is Reform led by Farage, rather than the Tories led by Badenoch. Even Starmer is calling Reform the real opposition.
That makes the Tories irrelevant and a bit like the Liberals in the 1920s, with the emergence of Labour, looking like they are a dying and soon-to-be minor fringe group.
Certainly, it is hard to find a member of Ms Badenoch’s top team in her shadow cabinet or many Tory MPs who are up for the fight. Apart from Robert Jenrick, shadow chancellor Mel Stride and a few others, not many of them are making headlines.
The snarky response from a CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) source to say Berry “had more positions than the Kama Sutra, and is now living proof that Reform will take anyone” has also angered several Tories who are currently wavering about joining Reform.
Ms Badenoch’s comments at her speech today at the Centre for Social Justice rather grated, too.
“If there are people who are not Conservatives, people who have probably been holding us back for a long time, then they should go to other parties that fit in with their values,” she said when asked about Berry. This was a man who spent a lot of time trying to get funding for the North of England to ensure the Tories did not lose many of the seats they ended up losing.
“All of the people who are not interested in coming up with a proper policy plan and just want to jump ship are welcome to do so, because when the time comes at the next general election, the public are going to be looking for a serious, credible alternative,” she said of a man who had been a loyal servant of the party for three decades.
She hit back at Farage for being left-wing and promising lots of benefits giveaways, calling him “Jeremy Corbyn with a cigarette and a pint”.
Answering a question about what the Reform leader has got that she hasn’t, Ms Badenoch claimed: “What Nigel Farage has got that I haven’t got is telling people whatever it is they want to hear. If people want the truth, they should come to the Conservatives.”
Yet the fact is that Sir Jake was well liked among the Tories and had founded and led the Northern Research Group of Tory MPs. He was an influential figure who might encourage many others to cross over.
Another ex-Tory MP messaged The Independent in the wake of his announcement to say they too were “close” to defecting, deploring the insults levelled at Sir Jake by the party leadership.
They said: “I hate CCHQ with every fibre.”
There is another serious point. Getting people like Sir Jake helps Reform professionalise. He is a very strong campaigner and organiser who can teach it about setting up ground campaigns and using data. Berry brings expertise that is currently lacking in Reform.
Meanwhile, as the news agenda goes on to small boats and Farage is parading his latest recruit, nobody really wants to hear a speech by Ms Badenoch on welfare.
Even though her message was serious and important (although typically lacking in policy detail), it was the wrong speech, wrong time, wrong circumstances again for a Tory leader who cannot catch a break.
