Jenrick’s day out at the races in the Sun

Remember when Robert Jenrick accepted £40,000 from airline shareholder Attestor and then campaigned to cut airline passenger duty? Now Reform’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick has accepted a horse racing freebie after campaigning against Rachel Reeves’s tax reforms – including those for the gambling industry.

The Tory turncoat has just declared a trip to Cheltenham paid for by The Sun in the Commons’s Register of Members’ Interests. The declaration values a day out to see the Gold Cup on March 13 at £2,600.

Jenrick, accompanied by wife Michal Berkner, enjoyed the trip just two days after voting against Reeves’s budget on its third reading in the Commons. The measures, which gained approval from the Lords last month, included sweeping reforms to betting taxes, increasing remote gaming duty from 21% to 40%, as well as adding a 25% rate on bookmaker’s profits on remote bets.

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The Sun had lobbied hard against any changes, launching a “Save Our Bets” campaign and running a series of headlines including “Fury as Reeves was WARNED higher gaming taxes would cost jobs but pressed ahead with hike anyway”, “Hiking taxes on betting will cost THOUSANDS of jobs & see hundreds of bookies’ shops CLOSE, Reeves warned” and “Any betting tax rises WILL cripple beloved British sports such as horse racing, Tories warn Rachel Reeves”.

By a remarkable coincidence, The Sun, whose sales figures are plummeting, is increasingly dependent for income on betting ads, both in print and online. At the time of writing, a prominent article on its website is “Best betting apps in the UK: Top mobile betting sites in April 2026”, which features a notice: “Taking one of the bookmaker offers featured in this article may result in a payment to The Sun”. It seems £2,600 to give Bobby J and his wife a lovely day out is a relative drop in the ocean!

The gift from the paper is the first reported by Jenrick since he became a member of Reform in February. The donations from Attestor, shareholder in German airline Condor, were made while he was still Kemi Badenoch’s shadow justice secretary. The £40,000, donated as £25,000 in March 2025 and £15,000 in September 2025, were made to “support his duties as an MP”.