Robert Jenrick, viral star of the conservative right

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Whispering on the camera while standing in a dark French park this month, Robert Jenrick looked so much like an online “migrant hunter” as a traditional conservative politician. “They hide just behind these trees here,” said the secretary in the shade of justice, designating a group he had followed by a migrant camp.

During his stay at the camp, he had filmed and interviewed men waiting to cross the English channel, before fleeing after being apparently bombed with bottles. The video was the last episode of a social media campaign carefully built by Jenrick, 43, who was beaten in conservative management last year by Kemi Badenoch. Rather than disappearing quietly in the ranks of the Shadow cabinet, he positioned himself loudly in the same territory as the Nigel Farage reform party, courting the controversy and intensifying his anti-immigration rhetoric lasts during protests from the asylum hotel this summer.

Throughout, Jenrick has kept his presence alive in the spirit of an uncertain conservative adhesion of Badenoch and worries the place that waded in the ballot boxes. “He makes huge waves with his stuff on social networks,” said Tim Bale, a policy professor at Queen Mary University in London, “and generally trying to give the impression that they should have chosen it rather than it.” A ranking in August of the Shadow cabinet among the readers of the News News Conservative Home Place Jenrick website well in advance on his colleagues. “The popularity of the secretary in the shadow of justice has become rooted,” noted an editorial.

While demonstrations in hotels for asylum seekers proliferate, Jenrick’s policy brand is gaining momentum, although certain conservative deputies fear that he leads the party in troubled waters, it can find it difficult to escape. A temporary injunction of a judge ruled this week that asylum seekers must leave their accommodation provided by the government at the Bell hotel in Epping – the epicenter of demonstrations after an asylum seeker staying at the hotel was accused of having sexually assaulted a 14 -year -old girl.

In the midst of the fury Jenrick, who has three young girls, wrote one article by post on Sunday, declaring that he did not want his children “to share a neighborhood with men from the backward countries who broke illegally in Great Britain and to whom we know almost nothing”. Jenrick does not accept the allegations he swims in dangerously troubled waters. He demanded and won apology from the BBC after a radio program suggested that he had posted a “xenophobia” in his email article on Sunday.

The Yougov survey shows that more than 70% of British believe that migration levels are too high, against around 60% in 2020. This also shows that respondents overestimated the quantity of “illegal” immigration. The arrivals of small boats, even though they reach record levels, remain a percentage to a total figure.

Jenrick’s ability to grasp the moment helped to transform it into a formerly improbable radical. Former Minister Michael Gove warned that his great weakness looked like “a typical conservative politician”. At the start of his political career, he was largely considered a “conservative boy” grouped with largely central opinions. But he has become the only person who seems to be rejuvenated by the loss of power of the curator.

Hit thanks to a combination of bodybuilding, racing and ozempic, which helped him abandon his highly appreciated Chinese dishes, his cheekbones are now as clear as some of his most controversial opinions. The allies say that if its populist push means that the conservatives have big titles which I really want, which Jenrick really wants a large -scale transformation of the British state after his stay in government, including as Minister of Immigration, left her deeply disappointed. “He was radicalized when he saw the state, trying to shoot levers that were not there,” said an ally. “Basic things were impossible. He realized that it was completely broken.”

People close to him say that his opinions also changed around October 7, 2023, when pro-Palestinian demonstrations broke out in British cities even before Israel launched his devastating response to the massacre that day. “Seeing such support open to Hamas and Houthi and a breakdown of anti-British and anti-Semitic feeling has really hit the house,” said an ally. “It felt nothing like Great Britain in which he grew up.” Jenrick has decided to talk about his roots of everyone in order to expand his public appeal, stressing that before marrying his wife, Michal Berkner – a Neo -Israeli and American company lawyer who is now a British citizen – he was not particularly rich.

He grew up in a middle -class family less than Wolverhampton, where he and his sister were the first in their family to go to university. His 85-year-old father always manages the home he has founded, and Jenrick wants a professional entrepreneurial company to help get the United Kingdom out of his economic torpor. “The battlefield is no longer simply on the left versus on the right: they are odds and ends against those who think that we need a radical change,” said Jenrick Ally.

Supporters also argue that his policy on the immigration center not on race but equity, stressing that he fought to reinstall Afghan interpreters who worked with the British army. His use of social media helped him reach a large audience, especially through the Atlantic. He sat with JD Vance during the recent visit to the US Vice-President at COTSWOLDS.

The Allies say that even the rivals of work congratulated him on his recent viral price by dodging the video, in which he confronted people who have passed the barriers to the London metro. Shadow cabinet colleagues have started to copy him. Chris Philp, the secretary of the shadow hermer, published his own video of a visit to a French migrant camp last week.

It is not yet clear if it will be enough to help the conservatives to remove the existential crisis posed by the reform. There was once Jenrick could be a bridge between the two parties to “unite the right”, although the allies underline that he is a conservative from start to finish. He gave one of his daughters the second first name “Thatcher”. Farage said Jenrick could find himself to the right of him on immigration by the next general elections.

On Wednesday, Jenrick suspended British flags to lampposts, lending his support for an online viral trend designed to expose an alleged “two level” approach to patriotism. “While the advice of hatred of Great Britain remove our own flags”, Jenrick posted on X, “we raise them”.

david.sheppard@ft.com,, jennifer.williams@ft.com

This article was modified after publication to correct the spelling of the name of Chris Philp