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WATCH IN FULL: Robert Jenrick declares the Tories 'won't change' as he defects to Reform UK
Jan 15, 2026
Robert Jenrick has delivered his speech at the Reform UK conference in Westminster after confirming his defection to Nigel Farage's party.Following his sacking from the Conservatives by Kemi Badenoch this morning, Mr Jenrick admitted he was of "different opinion" to Mrs Badenoch on "many issues" and the party "won't change".WATCH ABOVE.
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It's time for the truth. Britain has been in decline. Britain is in decline
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From 1970 to 2007, real wages went down by one third every 10 years
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Since then, they flatlined. At the turn of the millennium, the average Brit was earning more than twice as much as the average Pole
0:31
By 2031, we are on track to be poorer. Outside of London and the South East, our economy is closer to Bulgaria's than to Germany's
0:44
Today, 18 to 30-year-olds are the first Britons to earn less than their parents
0:50
houses cost more here than in any other OECD country. We have the highest energy prices
1:00
in the developed world. Our heavy industry has more than halved since 2003. Our service sector
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is exposed to AI. One in five working Brits are now not working at all. Our debt is the highest
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it's been since the 60s. Our tax burden, the highest since the 50s. We're spending more on
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debt interest than on defence and schools combined. In 2012, one in 20 people who went to A&E
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waited more than four hours. Now it's eight times that. One in five school kids are persistently
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absent. 93% of crime goes unresolved. The courts are backlogged. The prisons are overflowing
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Our army is the small it's been since Napoleonic times. 193,000 people have come here on small
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boats since 2018. Last year, one illegal migrant raped a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton. Terrorists
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have broken into Britain on small boats. And we're living through the most profound change to our population
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in our nation's history. Net migration is 100 times higher in the 25 years after 1997
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than in the 25 years before it. One in five in Britain weren't born here
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Many are not working or are doing low-paid work. just one in 20 of 2022's migrants were net contributors
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Countless communities in less than 25 years have become totally unrecognisable. The police, as we've seen this week, can't even police some of our largest cities
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Now my constituents in Newark feel this decline every day. It's a great historic town
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It is the honour of my life to represent it and to represent them in Parliament
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They are the best of our country. They are men and women who are getting up at six o'clock in the morning
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seven a.m. out the door to work in distribution centres and factories
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grafting all week but finding nothing left over for something nice with the kids on the weekends
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Their bills, their taxes are surging. Their money is taken to fund hotels for those here illegally in our country
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or the lifestyle of the guy down the road who everyone knows could be working but isn't working
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I challenge anyone to argue other than that Britain is completely broken
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Those that came before us built a great country, the greatest country in the world
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But we are set to lose it. We will for certain if this government gets reelected
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A suicidal energy policy. Crushing workers to fund scroungers on benefits. Unions running our public services. Payouts to terrorists. Prosecutions of veterans, the bravest of the brave
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900,000 migrants in their first year, 65,000 of them illegally, ending jury trials, cancelling elections, giving away our territory and 35 billion quid for the privilege
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These people run Britain as if they hate it. But whilst this government is accelerating our decline they didn begin it We had 20 to 30 years of this And why
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has it happened? Because the two main parties are rotten. They are no longer fit for purpose
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They both broke Britain and neither can fix it. It's a conclusion about the Conservative
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party that has pained me to reach. Because I've been a member of this party since I was 16 years
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old. I've served it for most of my adult life. I have countless good friends in the party
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not least my own members in Newark. They are the most decent, patriotic people I know
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And I respect, I cherish the party's contribution to our country. The party of Pitt and Peel
5:54
of Churchill and Thatcher. But our country is in a precarious, dangerous position
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And my first loyalty, our first loyalty, must be to our country. Turning it around will require
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each and every one of us to speak the truth. And not just to speak it, but to act
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What's the truth? Both Labour and the Conservatives broke Britain and both are now dominated by those without the competence or the backbone needed to fix it
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Both parties, if judged by their own actions, are committed to a set of ideas that have failed and are failing Britain
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Labour started mass migration, but the Conservatives ramped it up. After 2019, the Conservatives almost left us without a border
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Five million came, three quarters not to work. When I was Minister for Immigration in late 2022
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I fought colossal fights for reductions in legal migration alongside Suala Braverman
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There were 23 people in Cabinet back then. Just one or two others were with us
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Most of the party ultimately wanted what they viewed as cheap labour
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And it's the same on illegal migration. Blair enshrined the ECHR into British law
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He put the so-called human rights of illegal migrants, of terrorists, of criminals above our national security
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But so did the last Conservative government. I will never forget, never forget attending a Cabinet meeting in Downing Street
7:54
where a plan to stop the boats was signed off. But everyone, to a man and a woman around that table, knew in their hearts it was not going to work
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Some even joked about it. I left Downing Street that night, resolved to resign from the Cabinet
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And I've never forgotten that. And it isn't just immigration. Let me be very clear
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In 2008, Miliband legislated that we put major cuts to our emissions
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above having cheap and reliable energy in our country. For the poorest, for our heavy industry, for each and every business in our land
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What did the Conservative Party do? It didn't just keep and execute his plan
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It doubled down on it with insane net zero targets. And now, Ed Miliband is back, and he's gladly picked it up again
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Immediately after the last election, I said, I think more than anybody else in the Conservative Party
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the truth about the last Conservative government. The day after the general election, I said the Conservative Party had failed in government
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that there was hardly a principle they didn't betray. Hard taxes? They were left at a 70-year high
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Sound money? Well, the debt tripled. Defence? Utterly hollowed out. Work should pay? Welfare exploded
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Law and order? Prisons overflowed. In betraying its principles, the Conservative Party betrayed its voters
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its members and the men and women who elect me in Newark and Nottinghamshire
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And let's be very clear with ourselves. This didn't just happen. It wasn't bad luck
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It's because over time, most of the party in Westminster lost its way
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The principles were betrayed because a critical mass don believe in those principles at all After the last election I hoped like others that the Conservative Party would change
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reckon with our mistakes, with humility, that it would repent. I said this after the election, and I fought for it
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I fought for it every day. That's why I stood to be leader of the Conservative Party
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That's why I picked myself up the day after I lost the leadership of the Conservative Party
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and kept fighting, because I hoped that it would be possible. But over the last year, I've realised that I was naive
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It hasn't happened. Most of the Conservative Party in Westminster are in denial
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Or worse. They're being dishonest. about what the party's done. At a recent shadow cabinet debate
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a conversation broke out. The question was put to the group, is Britain broken
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I said instinctively, it's broken. Almost everyone said, it's not broken. And we were told, that is the party line
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A few had a third position. It is broken, but we can't say so because the Conservative Party broke it
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If they won't admit publicly to you, the British people, what they broke, what possible faith can you have in them to fix it
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the Conservative Party in Westminster isn't sorry it doesn't get it it hasn't changed
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it won't change it can't change now the people I'm about to mention
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are all decent people but because I'm here today I need to explain myself
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I owe that to you, the public and to the people who elect me
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look at the top table the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride has rightly attacked Labour for hiking taxes to fund more scrounging
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But there's just one problem. He was the Cabinet Minister who oversaw the explosion of the welfare bill
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And it was him who blocked the reforms that are needed. Priti Patel, the shadow Foreign Secretary
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created the very migration system that enabled 5 million migrants to come here
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the greatest failure of any British government in the post-war period. When asked about this last year, she defended her actions
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She doesn't believe she did anything wrong. Now, look, I respect Kemi, but I don't trust the Conservative Party on immigration
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Just two current Conservative MPs voted with me against the fraudulent plan to stop the votes
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two, two out of all the Conservative Party. Last year, I said the rape gang disgrace was in part because
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people with medieval attitudes towards women and girls had been allowed into our country
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Would you believe it? Several Conservative MPs complained about me for speaking out
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They said I was wrong and I shouldn't be saying that about the record of the last Conservative government
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Over Christmas, I instinctively saw the news that the anti-British, anti-Semitic terrorist sympathiser, El Fata, coming here to live in our country and enjoy the generosity of our people was wrong, and I spoke out against it
14:06
Let me tell you, several figures in the Conservative Party were angry at me
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They said, and I quote, it exposed the party to criticism for having granted him citizenship in 2021
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The fact is the Conservative Party is so compromised that it cannot speak for the country
14:28
It cannot oppose Labour's madness. It is not fit for purpose. So, yes, I'm glad Kemi has made getting rid of the rule of European judges Conservative Party policy
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But I know better than anybody else, from the leadership campaign, at least two-thirds
14:49
of Conservative MPs oppose this. They told me that privately. Some of them said so publicly
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There have been no Damascene conversions. There's not a traffic jam on the road to Damascus
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Over the last few weeks, in meetings and in calls, I told Kemi and her team what I've
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told you all today the Conservative Party needed to change fundamentally starting by acknowledging the state of Britain and owning up to the role we played in getting Britain to this point
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I respect Kemi, but on all those issues, we were in different places
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Let me be clear. They've doubled down. I can't kid myself anymore
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The party hasn't changed and it won't. the bulk of the party don't get it
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They don't have the stomach for the radical change that Britain needs
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In opposition, it's easy to paper over these cracks. But the divisions, the delusions are still there
16:00
And if we don't get the next government right, Britain will likely slip beyond the point of repair
16:07
Everything is on this. everything is on this decision. I can't, in good conscience, stick with a party that's failed so
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badly, that isn't sorry, that hasn't changed, that I know in my heart won't, can't deliver what's
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needed. That is why I resolved to leave. Because Nigel has stood consistently and very often alone
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for what's needed, ending mass migration, for cheap energy, for cutting waste and taxes and red tape
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Now, I don't agree with everything that he's ever said, and he definitely won't have agreed with everything that I've ever said
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But, in retrospect, I see that in this period, when two main parties were failing Britain
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Nigel was all too often a lone voice of common sense. When the first boat started crossing
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who was in the channel saying that it was outrageous? They laughed at him
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Well, they're not laughing now. Nigel has stood for the real change
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that we need now as a country for over a decade. Frankly, for most of my adult lifetime
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If anyone puts party allegiance, personal ambition to one side. He is obviously, obviously the right person to lead the movement
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for change Britain needs. Recognising the situation our country is in, I reached out
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to Nigel in September. I could see then the Conservative Party wasn't changing, couldn't
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fix Britain. I didn't know that I was going to defect. In fact, we didn't discuss that
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I just knew the responsible thing to do, the honest thing to do for me, was to explore all
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options. From the conversations that we've had since, quietly, and from what I've seen
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Nigel and Richard and Zia and Lee and Danny and Sarah say and do publicly, I am convinced
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that Nigel and reform will deliver the real change we need. Nigel knows, reform knows
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the extraordinary challenges that Britain faces require a comprehensive plan to turn our country
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around. That will be a major priority for this year. As Nigel has said, we will set out
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to build and recruit the team needed to execute that plan. Yes, a few people will come from
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parties who have realised that those parties have lost their way, who unquestionably back
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the real change that reform will bring. But far more importantly, people will come from
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outsider politics, people who've done great things in business, in our schools, in our hospitals
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our prisons, our armed forces, people the two political parties have locked out and ignored
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for far too long. For all those reasons, today I am proud to join the more than 270,000 people
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who are members of Reform UK. To back Nigel. To join this incredible movement
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A national movement that will pool Britain's talents, experience and expertise. Put previous differences to one side
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and deliver the real change we need. Turn our country around. At this hour, with Britain on the brink
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in real danger, this is what we must do. If you agree with us, don't sit on the sidelines
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Britain is broken. Britain needs reform. And reform needs you. Thank you all very much indeed
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