Things could get worse for the Conservatives

The Conservative Party may not be at its “lowest ebb” and things could “undoubtedly” get worse, potential Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has said.

The former Home Office minister told the BBC his party should be “repenting for some of the mistakes we’ve made, such as on immigration”.

He said it was a “possibility” that his party could be consigned to history.

He also accused some of his colleagues – including possible leadership rival James Cleverly – of not caring enough about illegal immigration.

Mr Jenrick survived the drubbing his party got in the recent election holding on to his Newark constituency, albeit with a much-reduced majority.

Earlier this month, the Conservatives suffered their worst election result in their parliamentary history, losing 251 seats.

Speaking to Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, Mr Jenrick said his party lost support because it failed to deliver on “crucial issues” such as immigration.

Asked if his party could be consigned to history, he replied it was “a possibility”.

“I don’t think that we should assume that the result that we’ve just suffered is our lowest ebb,” he said.

“If we fail to act now with seriousness and change the Conservative Party, then things undoubtedly could get worse.”

Rishi Sunak has said he will step down as party leader, but is staying on until arrangements for choosing his successor are in place.

The 1922 executive committee, which represents Conservative MPs, will announce the process for picking a new leader next week.

Mr Jenrick, who is on the right of the party, has been touted as a potential leadership contender.

He has not ruled out standing to replace Mr Sunak, but said two weeks after the election was not the right time to talk about this.

Instead he said there needed to be a “proper analysis of what’s gone wrong”.

Mr Jenrick served as housing minister under Boris Johnson and in October 2022 was appointed as immigration minister by Mr Sunak.

In December 2023, he dramatically quit his role in protest at the government’s Rwanda legislation, which he said did not “go far enough”.

Recalling the weeks ahead of his resignation, he said it became “painfully clear to me that this government… just wasn’t serious about tackling the issue [of illegal migration]”.

Mr Jenrick said he was in a meeting with senior ministers including the then-Home Secretary Mr Cleverly to discuss the government’s plan to deter people from crossing the Channel in small boats by deporting some people to Rwanda.

The policy had run into difficulties after the Supreme Court ruled it was unlawful. The government was planning to override the concerns with a new bill that would declare Rwanda was a safe country for asylum seekers, but Mr Jenrick said he did not believe that would work.

“I was literally the only person in the room who was saying, this will not work… and when I left that meeting, I felt that everybody round that table knew that this policy wasn’t going to work.

“No one else was willing to say it, and everyone was just going to go along with it, because they didn’t care enough about the issue.”

He went on to say that there were “few politicians who really see the sharp end of illegal migration”.

“It’s not their children who are being pushed down the social housing waiting lists because of migrants coming into this country. They are inured to the consequences of both legal and illegal migration,” he said.

“It’s become a low-status issue because there’s a degree of snobbery which prevents politicians talking about this.”

As prime minister, Mr Sunak had promised to stop small boats crossing the Channel.

However, while the number of people making the dangerous crossing fell in 2023, the figures for this year so far are higher than the same period in the previous four years.

Previous Conservative prime ministers had also promised to cut legal net migration – the difference between the number of people arriving in the UK and leaving – to the tens of thousands, but in 2022 it hit a record 764,000.

In 2023, net migration fell by more than 10% to 685,000 and could fall further due to visa rule changes.

When the drop in numbers was announced, then-Home Secretary Mr Cleverly said it showed the government’s plan was “working” and that he would not “hesitate to go further”.