How Robert Jenrick stopped the riots

What was the root cause of peace returning to Britain’s streets on Wednesday night? Was it, as Met police commissioner Mark Rowley said, “the show of force from the police, and frankly, the show of unity from communities together”? Was it, as Keir Starmer suggested, the “robust and swift response” of the criminal justice system, with tough sentences imposed quickly having a deterrent effect?

Or was it, as an ally of Tory leadership contender and leading Brexiteer Robert Jenrick told the Politico Playbook newsletter, all down to Tory leadership contender and leading Brexiteer Robert Jenrick? “He spoke some hard truths and then the riots stopped,” said the anonymous chum, which Politico considered “a very, shall we say, unique interpretation”.

What exactly was it that Jenrick said to calm the mutinous masses? Was it when he went on Sky News to say that he “thought it was quite wrong that somebody could shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ on the streets of London and not be immediately arrested”? When this was quickly condemned by Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi (“more of his usual nasty divisive rhetoric – he is such a tool”), Jenrick was forced into retreat. “‘Allahu Akbar’ is spoken peacefully and spiritually by millions of British Muslims,” he wrote on social media, unfortunately accompanying this non-apology with a video showing masked Muslim men chanting the slogan in a way he then described as “intimidatory and threatening”.

If not this fiasco, then perhaps the rioting rabble were quieted by a video Jenrick posted on social media. In it, accompanied by swirling music, he called for long prison sentences for far right rioters but also thought it wise to add “the sectarian gangs marching through towns and cities waving weapons and in some cases attacking white Britons are a disgrace”. Have these “sectarian gangs” been the ones attempting to burn down hotels with people inside, or attacking mosques, or looting shops? They have not, but Jenrick thought them worthy of equal condemnation.

With added equivocation about “understandable… anger” over the Southport killings and a political system that has “failed too many people and communities”, the message was clear. If you’ve swallowed the “legitimate concerns” line, if you believe there are fine people on both sides (and probably equally as many bad ones on both too) then Jenrick needs your vote for leader.

He’s likely to be the leader, too. Jenrick is running ahead of Kemi Badenoch in the bookmakers’ odds, and doubts remain about whether the ageing, white Conservative membership will select someone who grew up in Lagos over someone who grew up in Ludlow. They picked the clearly bonkers Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak, remember?

This great healer is supported in the leadership contest by former Brexit secretary David Frost. In April, he and Jenrick jointly published a Telegraph article which hailed Brexit as Britain’s “biggest achievement” and called for a Conservative Party that “definitively finishes the Brexit job, delivers our Brexit opportunities to enable reform and change in the interests of everyone in this country – and allows the British people to govern ourselves once again as a free people”. This proposed a grab-bag of measures that would damage what remains of British manufacturing, threaten economic and social stability in Northern Ireland and deepen job shortages in sectors from farming to hospitality, all in pursuit of an ideological fantasy.

With his dogwhistling and his Brexit delusion, Robert Jenrick is therefore both completely unfit to be leader of the Conservative Party and also the most likely person to lead it into the next election. And the good news for his future campaign: even those rioters now entering the prison system after being convicted or remanded are likely to be out in time to vote for him in four or five years.