Tin-eared Jenrick strikes again

Robert Jenrick’s bid for the Conservative leadership – a race which, technically, finished nine months ago, not that you’d know – has taken a blow after a tin-eared attack on chancellor Rachel Reeves annoyed even his own followers.

The self-styled Bobby J reacted to the chancellor’s tears in the Commons chamber by posting a 20-second clip of himself on social media standing outside the Treasury and dramatically tearing a copy of the government’s welfare reform bill in half.

“Rachel Reeves’s benefits bill is dead,” he informed his followers solemnly. “And so is her career. She’s been humiliated by her own backbenchers and forced into her most embarrassing u-turn yet.

“By her own metric she’s crashed the economy, she’s lost the confidence of the markets, and now, it seems, she’s lost the confidence of the prime minister too. It’s time for Reeves to go.”

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Leaving aside that Reeves hasn’t crashed the economy – unlike Liz Truss, who Jenrick served loyally as a health minister – and that the market reaction to Reeves’s tears showed, conversely, that she does have their confidence, the response to his attack was withering – even from right wing social media users.

“Once again Robert you are just reminding me why I will never vote Tory again,” wrote one, while another decried it as a “cheap shot”. Another described it as “Nasty. Petty. Valueless”, while others said he was an “unpleasant man”, that his comments were “distasteful and beneath the role of a public servant”, that he was “plummeting to the lowest of low with posts like this” and was a “coward taking advantage of a woman’s very genuine distress, which may be due to something personal and private”.

Eventually even Bobby J realised he had got the tone wrong and posted: “I obviously hope that Rachel Reeves’s personal matter is resolved. It’s never nice to see someone upset. The PM had a chance to support her at PMQs but threw her under the bus.”

Someone else who may have been upset was Mel Stride, whose job, as shadow chancellor, it technically is to comment on Treasury matters. But Jenrick is increasingly speaking out on matters well beyond his Justice brief as it’s just three months until his supporters can trigger a no-confidence vote in Kemi Badenoch – assuming, that is, that he has any supporters left by then.