Did Robert Jenrick want to 'destroy' new best pal Zia Yusuf?

Robert Jenrick and Zia Yusuf have been trying to project an unlikely bromance since the former defected to Reform last month, posting admiring messages about each other on X and posing for rictus-grinned photo ops.

But a toxic rivalry remains. Yusuf is said to have been the most lukewarm of Nigel Farage’s inner circle on allowing Jenrick in and revelations that Bobby J sought to access the private information of his new colleague six months before jumping ship is hardly going to help.

The Times reports today that Jenrick, now Reform’s ludicrously titled “shadow chancellor’, asked a Conservative colleague for private information provided by Yusuf when he applied to be a Tory candidate, saying that “we should destroy him”.

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It came at around the time that Jenrick accused Yusuf of “bullshit” after he said that a member of his team “accidentally pressed like” on an antisemitic X post attacking Jenrick’s wife, who is Jewish. Jenrick had also dubbed him “Zia Useless”.

According to the Times, Jenrick was advised to be careful about using Yusuf’s personal details but said it was “dog eat dog” and that “we should destroy him”. A Tory party source told the paper that Jenrick and his team were “obsessed” with Yusuf, who himself had his eye on Reform’s Treasury brief before making do with home affairs, and said: “Zia should watch his back. He’ll be first out of the door when Rob takes over from Nigel.”

Last month, seeking to downplay reports of bad blood between the two, Yusuf posted on X “Having spent time with @RobertJenrick, I am convinced he will be a quality addition to Reform”, while Jenrick reciprocated, “Zia co-founded a business worth hundreds of millions of pounds and has now dedicated himself to fixing Britain.”

Much of the talk around Farage’s new “shadow cabinet” is whether any of them posed a threat to the media ubiquity enjoyed by the Dear Leader. Might his bigger problem be two of them taking chunks out of each other instead?