A new Conservative party is here which is determined to deport “every illegal immigrant”, according to Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick. The 43-year-old former immigration minister promises a radically different approach to protect the integrity of Britain’s borders if the Tories can win back the trust of Britain’s electorate. The days of “pussy-footing” are over and at least 150,000 people with no right to live here would be deported each year by a dedicated Removals Force, he pledges.
Mr Jenrick did not quit the stage when he came second in last year’s leadership race but kept his foot to the floor, working to rebuild a party reeling from the cataclysmic 2024 election loss. Now he wants more action so the Conservatives can escape their third place position in the polls behind Labour and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
“We’ve got to put our foot on the pedal and gain some momentum,” he says.
Recent Ipsos polling found public concern about immigration has reached its highest level in a decade, with 51% naming it an important issue for Britain. He wants removals to continue “until every single illegal migrant in this country is deported”, sending out the message that people who break the law by coming to Britain “have absolutely no chance of making a life here in the UK”.
He is fully behind plans to “scrap immigration tribunals”, warning judges’ decisions have “tested the patience of the British public beyond breaking point”.
Mr Jenrick is confident Britain can tackle the “jumped-up gangsters” behind small boat crossings, arguing this is “not as complicated a challenge as some like to think”.
He says: “What we would do is send a very clear signal: If you come here illegally you will be detained, you will be removed within days and you have zero chance of making a life in the UK. If you happen to have come here before these measures came into place, our new Removals Force is going to find you and is going to deport you.”
As well as taking on gangsters, he is ready to challenge an “out of touch elite” which has “propagated this false narrative that unlimited migration is a driver of economic growth in this country”.
“That is simply not true and has been comprehensively debunked,” he says. “It has led to hard-working Brits – like those I represent in Newark – seeing their wages undercut as businesses reach for the easy lever of foreign workers. It has deterred businesses from investing in the technology they need to drive their business forward; our country has the lowest uptake of robots of any country in the western world.
“What I want to see is businesses focusing on hiring, training and paying properly British workers. If they do that then that’s good for everyone; it’s good for our economy and it will make us a more united country once again.”
He is concerned at the impact of years of mass immigration on the social fabric of the nation.
“It is simply impossible to successfully integrate so many people in such a short period of time,” he argues. “And it is proving immensely challenging to successfully integrate large numbers of people from countries which have very different attitudes to our own, particularly towards women and girls. So this has got to come to an end – we have to secure our borders and we have got to bring the numbers of people coming into our country right down and give everyone breathing space.”
The Conservatives are embracing tougher policies on migration and backing withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights at a time when polling suggests Reform UK would be the largest party if there was a snap election.
Beating Reform will “take time”, he says, adding: “We’ve got to be honest about the mistakes we made in office. We’ve got to listen to the public and regain their trust and confidence over a period of time.
“It’s not going to be an overnight change but I think it can be done.”
And he has a simple message for Conservative colleagues who may be tempted to defect to Reform: “Have faith. This is a 200-year-old party.
“It is the party [of] Peel and Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher. It is true no political party has a divine right to exist but we can turn this around and we have got to fight back.”
A priority is showing the “public that we’ve really changed, that this is a new Conservative party that’s going to be doing things differently to how they were done in the recent past”.
The Conservatives are arriving for their conference in Manchester, a city shaken by Thursday’s attack on a synagogue which saw two innocent people die and the man behind the atrocity fatally shot.
“I’m glad the police killed him,” Mr Jenrick says. “He was an evil monster, he deserved to die and the police were right to take him out as quickly as they could.”
The father of three, whose wife is Jewish, has described receiving antisemitic death threats. He wants this form of hatred purged from our society.
“We’ve known that Islamist extremists are festering amongst us for many years and, frankly, successive governments and elites like those running our institutions have failed to do what was necessary,” he warns. “We’ve got to have a zero tolerant attitude towards extremism, which means rooting out anyone with these views – whether that’s hate preachers or those on our streets who are lionising terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah, and we’ve got to ensure that our universities, our charities, the NHS stop harbouring these extremists and antisemites.”
The Conservatives opposed Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood and he makes the case for revoking this move.
“If we were lucky enough to be in Government in the future and there had not been a full solution to the Israel-Palestine question, then I would hope the UK Government would reverse this decision but that’s ultimately for a future Conservative Government to take, depending on the circumstances at the time.”
The road back to power will be hard but Mr Jenrick gives every sign of relishing the challenge. He is established as one of his party’s ablest and most energetic communicators and a new cadre of Conservative MPs share his vision for a Tory party which rejects open borders.
Confident that change is afoot, he says: “I’ve never pretended that this is anything other than a mountain to be climbed but we’re beginning to make progress.”