“I’ve been on a trip today…and I’ve been on a plane”, Kemi Badenoch told me in Edinburgh this afternoon when I asked her if she had spoken to Robert Jenrick, her former Shadow Justice Secretary.
Hours earlier, the Conservative leader spectacularly sacked the man who had hoped to take her job, saying he was planning to defect to Reform UK.
Her Chief Whip had made the call and Ms Badenoch politely implied to me she had been too busy to speak to him.
I suspected Ms Badenoch did not want to talk to Mr Jenrick following my talk with her in the Scottish capital.
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Because just a few minutes, after she told me MrJenrick was “not my problem now”, he broke his radio silence with a post on X: “It’s time for the truth”.
Minutes later, Mr Jenrick was next to Nigel Farage, slating the Tories and declaring Britain is “broken".
Ms Badenoch, who I interviewed from the rooftop bar of the Jonnie Walker Whiskey Experience, overlooking Edinburgh Castle, was sipping Scotch as the press conference in London unfolded.
It was not the day any of us had expected.
Robert Jenrick defected to Reform UK
|GETTY
I was on the tarmac at Heathrow Airport, about to fly off to Scotland, when I saw Ms Badenoch’s tweet.
Landing at Edinburgh Airport, I switched flight mode off and was greeted with a tsunami of messages and notifications.
Walking down Princess Street, I spoke on the phone to Tory MPs and sources close to the party leadership.
Clearly, someone decided to dob Mr Jenrick in, and Ms Badenoch, who had concrete evidence of something that had long been whispered, hastily made the call to strike first.
I had planned to interview Ms Badenoch before the Reform presser at 4.30pm. We thought it would be about local elections being cancelled this May.
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Kemi Badenoch visited Edinburgh
|GETTY
I had expected to be asking her about the Tories' prospects in the forthcoming Holyrood elections, West Midlands Police Chief Constable Craig Guildford refusing to resign, Grok, a ban on social media for under-16s. Perhaps Greenland.
All that was out the window. Ms Badenoch set the cat among the pigeons with this brutal pre-emptive strike against the man she beat to the Tory leadership contest back in 2024.
Perhaps that is partly why Mr Jenrick has defected to Reform now.
Ms Badenoch’s performance has improved in recent months. Mr Jenrick’s route to the leadership was blocked.
That is what Ms Badenoch’s supporters think.
Despite the bold action and show of strength in acting first, it shows which way many on the right believe the wind is blowing towards a Reform government.
Today could be the day we look back on as sounding the death knell for the Conservatives.
Alternatively, the Tories might continue inching up in the polls.
Much, I suspect, depends on two things: opinion polls over the coming weeks and what Tory MPs do next, given Mr Farage has told party members to defect before May.
As Boris Johnson once said: “When the herd moves, it moves”.
If Reform continues to dip in the polls and the Tories hold steady, MPs may hold their nerve. But the more they go to Reform, the harder it becomes.
Ms Badenoch admitted to me she felt “sad” to lose Mr Jenrick.
Broadly, Ms Badenoch's team are glad to have seized the moment.
MPs I have spoken to are firmly behind her. There are plenty of mutterings about how they had always suspected Mr Jenrick of treachery.
But one thing is for certain: Ms Badenoch has earned that drink.
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