How Robert Jenrick Stopped the Riots

What was the root cause of the peace that returned to the streets of Britain on Wednesday night? Was it, as Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said, “the show of force by the police, and frankly, the show of unity by communities together”? Was it, as Keir Starmer suggested, the “robust and swift response” of the criminal justice system, with tough sentences being imposed swiftly and acting as a deterrent?

Or was it, as an ally of the Tory leadership candidate and leading Brexit advocate Robert Jenrick told the Political playbook newsletter, all thanks to Tory leadership candidate and leading Brexiteer Robert Jenrick? “He spoke some hard truths and then the rioting stopped,” said the anonymous comrade, who Politics considered “a very, shall we say, unique interpretation”.

What exactly did Jenrick say to calm the mutinous masses? Was it when he said on Sky News that he thought it was “utterly wrong that anyone could shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ on the streets of London without being immediately arrested”? When this was swiftly condemned by Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi (“more of his usual vile divisive rhetoric – he is such a tool”), Jenrick was forced to backtrack. “‘Allahu Akbar’ is spoken peacefully and spiritually by millions of British Muslims,” he wrote on social media, and unfortunately he accompanied this non-apology with a video of masked Muslim men chanting the slogan in a manner he subsequently described as “intimidating and threatening”.

If this fiasco were not the case, then perhaps the rioting mob would have been calmed by a video Jenrick posted on social media. In it, set to swirling music, he called for long prison sentences for far-right rioters, but also saw fit to add that “the sectarian mobs marching through towns and villages with weapons and in some cases attacking white Britons are a disgrace”. Were these “sectarian mobs” the ones who tried to burn down hotels with people in them, or attacked mosques, or looted shops? They didn’t, but Jenrick felt they deserved to be condemned just the same.

With the added ambiguity 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 swallowed the “legitimate concerns” line, if you believe there are good people on both sides (and probably just as many bad people on both sides), then Jenrick needs your vote for leader.

He is also likely to be the leader. Jenrick is ahead of Kemi Badenoch in the bookies’ odds, and doubts remain as to whether the ageing, white Conservative members will choose someone who grew up in Lagos over someone who grew up in Ludlow. They chose the clearly deranged Liz Truss over Rishi Sunak, remember?

This great healer is being supported in the leadership contest by former Brexit Secretary David Frost. In April he and Jenrick published a Telegraph article that hailed Brexit as Britain’s “greatest achievement” and called for a Conservative Party that “finishes the Brexit job once and for all, uses our Brexit opportunity to deliver reform and change for the benefit of everyone in this country – and allows the British people to govern themselves again as a free people”. It proposed a grab bag of measures that would damage what was left of British manufacturing, threaten economic and social stability in Northern Ireland and exacerbate job shortages in sectors from farming to hospitality, all in the pursuit of an ideological fantasy.

With his dogwhistling and Brexit madness, Robert Jenrick is therefore both utterly unfit to be leader of the Conservative Party and the most likely person to lead the party into the next election. And the good news for his future campaign: even the rioters now entering the prison system after being convicted or remanded in custody will probably be released in time to vote for him in four or five years’ time.