We hold power to account. Our journalists investigate, interrogate and report without fear or favour. | | Robert Jenrick announced his defection at a press conference with Nigel Farage yesterday |  | Ben Riley-Smith Political Editor | So what happens next? That will be the question spinning round the heads of top Tory and Reform figures this morning as they digest a dizzying day of defection.
It was not just Robert Jenrick’s move to abandon ship for Nigel Farage’s party, but the highly personal manner in which he did so that stood out yesterday. The Conservative Party, declared the man who was still manoeuvring to lead it a few months ago, was “rotten”, delusional, “dishonest”, incompetent and “no longer fit for purpose”.
Sir Mel Stride and Dame Priti Patel, politicians who have served with Jenrick for years in the cabinet and shadow cabinet, were singled out and framed as betrayers to the Right-wing cause.
The implications for the Tories are not good. The sugar rush of Team Badenoch discovering the plot and exploding it into the public domain will be temporary.
Tougher questions now follow. Who could defect next? How can they be identified and kept on side? What can be done to convince voters that the surge of Conservatives crossing the aisle does not mean Reform is now the main party of the Right?
Mr Farage, as the smile on his face at the joint press conference with Jenrick gave away, is in a much more comfortable position. That is not to say the arrival of an arch Tory critique is problem-free.
Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, and Zia Yusuf, its policy chief, are already publicly tussling for the plum job in a future Reform shadow cabinet going into the next general election: shadow chancellor.
Jenrick may want that role, or perhaps he hopes to be Reform’s first home secretary. In which case the months he spent in the Home Office opening asylum hotels and overseeing high immigration levels need to be carefully explained away.
Reform has never been a nest of birds singing in harmony. Jenrick’s arrival, and that of other senior ex-Tories like Nadhim Zahawi, risks upsetting the balance of a senior team not short on ego.
Betrayal, secret plots, leaks, leadership ambitions – this Westminster saga really does have it all.
Read the full story here ➤
Plus, the man who created this furore has written for us, and you can read his column below.
Robert Jenrick: I’ve joined Reform, and you should too ➤ | Reaction to the defection |  | David Frost | The slow start to the political year is well and truly over. Westminster can stop pretending to worry about Greenland, Venezuela and Iran. What matters is that the subterranean warfare between Reform and the Tories has now burst into the open. Both parties are engaged in a street fight to the death. Each party is trying to kill off the other and has no alternative to doing so.
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Read Benji Wilson’s review here ➤ | Nil volentibus arduum
(*Nothing is difficult for the willing) Every weekday, Orlando Bird, our loyal reader correspondent, shares an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories. Orlando writes...
Did you learn Latin at school? Or indeed, as some would no doubt say, endure it? I didn’t do either, and although I have no idea if I’d have been any good at it, I wish it had been an option. (Instead I was taught a word or two of Cornish, which, to my considerable surprise, I don’t find myself drawing on very often.)
We’ve had lots of letters in response to Philip Womack’s article, in which he argues that a grounding in the classics should be available to all. Not a single one has complained about having to chant “amo, amas, amat” ad nauseam. Indeed, most have agreed that even a smattering of Latin can go a long way.
Christopher Pelly wrote: “Many moons ago Latin enabled me to read the Bayeux Tapestry. Last year it allowed me to follow the sonorous language of Pope Leo’s enthronement.” He added: “It was the ultimate lingua franca in medieval times, when scholars addressed each other in polished prose and poetry, and used it at international symposia, where it would have been readily comprehensible.”
James Rose told how, “although I went to a grammar school, I was not taught formal Latin – but I picked up a little. I have also always been interested in flora, through which I have learnt a lot of Latin. This has stood me in good stead when visiting southern European countries whose languages descend from Latin, helping me navigate menus and make conversation.”
It’s not just about usefulness, though. Bernard Richards observed: "Mr Womack’s article concludes with a defence of Latin that one does not often hear: ‘It is beautiful, in and of itself.’
“I am reminded of a very moving moment in Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907), when his father is murmuring from Virgil’s Eclogue I: ‘Tu, Tityre, lentus inumbra/Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas’ (‘You, Tityrus, at ease beneath the shade, teach the woods to re-echo “fair Amaryllis”’).
“The child listens ‘as if to a nightingale’. Gosse writes: ‘A miracle had been revealed to me, the incalculable, the amazing beauty which could exist in the sound of verses’. This argument was never put to me when I was learning Latin in school.” Should Latin be taught more widely? Send your responses here, and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of From the Editor PM, for which you can sign up here.
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