ROBERT Jenrick has suggested that former Home Secretary Suella Braverman should join him and defect to Reform UK.
In an interview during Patrick Christys Tonight on GB News, he said: “I don’t think anyone says I haven’t been vocal in the last two or three years. Most of the time people were saying, ‘Are you too frank, or you’re being too public in your criticisms of the last Conservative government?’
“Sure, perhaps I should have said some of these things even sooner. But when you’re in government, you’re bound by collective responsibility. You’re trying to do a good job in the role that you have. But certainly, when I was housing Secretary, I fought to get more homes built, was immensely frustrated that the last Conservative government backed down on that, which has hurt young people and all those people who depend on those jobs, like brickies and plumbers and builders across the country,
“In particular, at the Home Office with Suella Braverman, I fought a one-year battle, really, to get the small boats down. We had some success, got them down by a third. No one’s done that before or since, and we did secure the big changes to legal migration that are now starting to have effect.
“But above all, I resigned when, when I couldn’t get what I really needed out of Rishi Sunak, I said no, went on to the back benches and started fighting there.”
Asked if Braverman should join Reform UK, he said: “I don’t know what she intends to do, so I don’t want to put words into her mouth, but I have the highest respect for Suella. She was right on the big issues, and I’d love to see her play a more prominent role in British politics.”
Responding to criticism that he was the architect of the migrant hotel system, he said: “Not correct on the first point. I did support the idea that we bring the very small number of brave interpreters who supported our troops in Afghanistan to safety in the UK. And I met a couple in my own constituency, but I certainly did not support the idea that that has to turn into tens of thousands of people.
“Both Suella and I rigorously opposed that in the Home Office, to the point where we refused entry to any of those people until ultimately both of us left office, and then it all started to spiral afterwards, on the hotels.
“Look, I hated the hotels as much as anybody else, and I worked night and day to the point where we could actually start closing them. In the end, I set in train the closure of the first 100 of the hotels. But why did the hotels exist? Because the numbers were out of control, and you were only going to get a grip on that – it doesn’t matter, they could be on military bases, they could be in hotels, they could be in HMOs, they could be on the streets. That’s not the point.
“The point is, how do you stop them coming in the first place? And it was obvious to me, the only way you do that is detain and deport them, leave the human rights treaties like ECHR, and that’s why I campaigned, ultimately, that’s why I resigned, because I couldn’t persuade Rishi to do that, and I knew that we would just be trapped in this cycle of always dealing the symptom of the problem or not getting to the crux.”
