Watch: The “two main parties are rotten”, Robert Jenrick says in first speech as a Reform member
Former Conservative shadow minister Robert Jenrick has announced he is joining Reform UK, hours after he was sacked by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch for plotting to defect to Nigel Farage’s party.
Jenrick was unveiled at a press conference by Farage, who thanked Badenoch for expelling her former Tory leadership rival and helping “realign the centre-right of British politics”.
In a tirade against his old party and former colleagues, Jenrick said the Conservatives “broke” the country, were “rotten” and had “betrayed its voters”.
Speaking minutes before he took to the stage, Badenoch said it was a “good day” for the Conservatives and Jenrick was “now Nigel Farage’s problem”.
Jenrick becomes the second sitting Tory MP – after Danny Kruger in September 2025 – to switch to Farage’s party, which has been consistently leading in national opinion polls for months.
It also follows the defection of former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi this week, and about 20 former Tory MPs to Farage’s party, which now has six sitting MPs in the House of Commons.
In the video, she said: “I was presented with clear, irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect in a way designed to be as damaging as possible to his shadow cabinet colleagues and the wider Conservative Party.”
Hours passed without a response from Jenrick, as Conservative sources told the BBC his plans had been rumbled after materials, including a defection speech, had been found “lying around”.
When Farage appeared at a press conference in Westminster on Thursday afternoon, he said he “had to think very quickly as to how I should respond to this”.
Farage said that, while he had been talking to Jenrick for months, he had not intended to present him as the party’s latest Tory defector at the press conference.
But he thanked Badenoch for what he called “the latest Christmas present I’ve ever had” before Jenrick walked on stage, following an awkward delay, to join the Reform UK leader.
Watch: Jenrick joins Farage at Reform UK’s press conference
“It’s time for the truth,” Jenrick said in his speech. “Britain has been in decline. Britain is in decline.”
He added: “Both Labour and the Conservatives broke Britain. And both are now dominated by those without the competence or backbone needed to fix it.”
He said the Conservatives were in denial about the state of Britain and called out some of his former shadow cabinet colleagues by name in a string of personal criticisms.
He said shadow chancellor Mel Stride had “oversaw the explosion of the welfare bill” and “blocked the reforms needed” when he was the work and pensions secretary.
Dame Priti Patel, Jenrick said, had allowed a “million migrants to come here” in what he called “the greatest failure of any British government in the post-war period”.
Jenrick – a former housing secretary and immigration minister – served alongside both Stride and Patel in the Conservative governments led by Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.
While Jenrick accepted had roles in governments that had “failed so badly”, he said he had been “let down” by Johnson and Sunak.
Questioned by journalists after his speech, Jenrick said he had no ambitions to lead Reform UK and had not been offered a role in his new party, saying “I want Nigel to be prime minister”.
Farage said Jenrick “will be joining our frontline team”, without specifying his role.
It appears Jenrick was bounced into the move to Reform UK by Badenoch.
Minutes before Jenrick was unveiled as Reform UK’s latest recruit, the Tory leader told the BBC: “I think the fact that Robert Jenrick was very happy to tell me just a few days ago he had no plans to defect while clearly plotting to do so and hurt his colleagues is not suitable for the Tory party.”
She added: “It is not a blow to lose someone who lies to his colleagues.
“I think people can see that the only person that is telling the truth is me. I have a duty to protect my colleagues… and I have a duty to those who vote Conservative.
“This has been a good day, bad people are leaving my party.”
Watch: ‘Jenrick is no longer my problem’ – Badenoch
Badenoch has appointed West Suffolk MP Nick Timothy, a former aide to Theresa May, as his replacement, praising him as “a true Conservative” and “formidable campaigner”.
Various Conservative sources have been speaking to the BBC with versions of what happened, with one shadow cabinet minister claiming Jenrick left a printed copy of his resignation speech lying around, “like something from The Thick Of It”.
This was backed up by a senior Conservative MP close to Badenoch, who said they had got hold of a “full speech and media plan” for his defection, and another Conservative source talking about “material” that was left “lying around”.
This source told the BBC there was “plenty of evidence” Jenrick was getting closer to Reform and the defection was being planned “quite soon” and “in the most damaging way possible for the party”.
It is alleged Jenrick had dinner with Farage last month – and his team had been speaking to “various people” about the possibility.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Badenoch’s decision showed “weakness” and questioned why it had taken her so long to act.
“Jenrick has been making toxic comments to try and divide our country for months and months and months and it’s only now, when he’s on the verge of defecting to Reform, that Badenoch gets round to sacking him,” he said.
Sir Keir said the “flood” of Conservative politicians going across to Reform UK showed the “Tory party is a sinking ship” and added: “Nigel Farage is welcoming these failed politicians into his ranks and building his party as a party of the Tory politicians who let the country down so badly.”
Jenrick’s sacking and switching of allegiances is a pivotal moment for the future of the British right wing, with Conservative MPs genuinely fearful their party is being usurped by Reform UK.
He finished second in the leadership election in 2024 and his creative use of social videos has only given him greater prominence since.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper MP said Jenrick “has an industrial-grade brass neck to be complaining about how broken Britain is, when it was him and his Conservative cronies who did such damage to our country and to trust and faith in politics”.
She added: “Reform and the Conservatives are two sides of the same coin.”
Emmerdale fans think it’s only a matter of time before Joe Tate is killed off after his latest villainous actions on the ITV soap, leading to a threat from Robert Sugden
Joe Tate could meet a gruesome end on Emmerdale(Image: ITV)
Joe Tate could meet a gruesome end on Emmerdale, after his run-in with Robert Sugden this week.
Fans know that vile Joe is blackmailing the Sugdens for their farm, after he watched and filmed Victoria Sugden killing her brother John Sugden. She had not meant to kill him, but attacked him after he turned on her.
Joe took things further when he told Robert that as well as handing over the farm, he had to frame Moira Dingle for dodgy dealings with drugs, actually committed by Celia Daniels. At the time it seemed Joe didn’t realise the evidence he’d found at missing Celia’s home also exposed the human trafficking she was caught up in.
After telling Robert he had to plant the evidence in Moira’s house so that Moira would be handed a fine, forcing her to sell her farm to him, Joe claimed he would pay Robert for this. Robert was torn but went ahead with it out of fear for Victoria.
But now that Joe has crossed the Sugdens and Aaron Dingle, and now he’s targeting Moira and Cain again, fans think it’s all leading to his final downfall. Despite his run-in with Robert who has vowed to make him pay, fans don’t think Robert will be the one who kills Joe if he does meet a grim fate.
One theory read: “Anyone else think this latest storyline with wanting to set Moira up is going to lead to him being killed off and another whodunnit? When the truth inevitably comes out, I think people will be annoyed at Robert initially.
“But once he explains to Cain and Moira why, they’ll eventually understand (we know Moira is also quite protective of Victoria) and anger will soon turn to Joe. And to be honest, almost everyone in the village will be a suspect.”
Another fan said: “I think he could be killed off because he’s already had a whodunnit and survived and then all the bad things he’s done, he’s got away with it all. His latest stuff is so evil I can’t see him being redeemed from it.
“So I definitely think someone will want revenge. I feel like they want us to think Robert or Aaron or even Victoria would be involved, maybe Moira or Cain too, but what if in a twist of all twists its Graham who ends up killing him?
“Or Kim, given she wanted him dead the last time.” Another fan wrote; “I think Graham will deal with him,” while a further theory said: “What if something happens and Kim and Graham team up and Joe gets killed?
“Wouldn’t put anything past Kim… you just have to look at her history.” A final theory said: “I think maybe Dawn will find out what he has done and she could end up killing him or maybe even Kim (both of them have done it before), and the previous whodunnit with the pushing him out the window was just leading up to this – like a pre-warning he was going to die.”
There was no shortage of engrossing art with which to engage in Southern California museums during the past year, although the considerable majority of it had been made only within the past 50 years or so. Art’s global history before the Second World War continues to play a decided second fiddle to contemporary art in special exhibitions.
Our picks for this year’s best in arts and entertainment.
The chief exception: the Getty, where its Brentwood anchor and Pacific Palisades outpost accounted for three of the 10 most engrossing museum exhibitions in 2025, all 10 presented here in order of their opening dates. (Four are still on view.)
Art museums across the country continue to struggle in attendance and fundraising after the double-whammy of the lengthy COVID-19 pandemic shut-down followed by culture war attacks from the Trump administration. That may help explain the unusually lengthy, seven- to 14-month duration of half of these shows.
Gustave Caillebotte, “Floor Scrapers,” 1875, oil on canvas.
(Musée d’Orsay )
Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men. Getty Center
An emphasis on men’s daily lives is very unusual in French Impressionist art. Women are more prominent as subject matter in scores of paintings by marquee names like Monet, Cassatt and Degas. But homosocial life in late-19th century Paris was the fascinating focus of this show, the first Los Angeles museum survey of Gustave Caillebotte’s paintings in 30 years.
A view into a dance gallery is framed by Guadalupe Rosales’ “Concourse/C3” installation.
(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)
Guadalupe Rosales – Tzahualli: Mi Memoria en Tu Reflejo. Palm Springs Art Museum
Vibrant Chicano youth subcultures of 1990s Los Angeles, during the fraught era of Rodney King and the AIDS epidemic, are embedded in the art of one of its enthusiastic participants. Guadalupe Rosales layers her archival work onto pleasure and freedom today, as was seen in this vibrant exhibition, offering a welcome balm during another period of outsized social distress.
Don Bachardy, “Christopher Isherwood,” June 20, 1979; acrylic on paper.
(Don Bachardy Paper / Huntington Library)
Don Bachardy: A Life in Portraits. The Huntington
The nearly 70-year retrospective of portrait drawings in pencil and paint by Los Angeles artist Don Bachardy revealed the works to be like performances: Both artist and sitter participated in putting on a pictorial show. The extended visual encounter between two people, its intimacy inescapable, culminates in the two “actors” autographing their performed picture.
“Probably Shakyamuni, the Historical Buddha,” China, Tang Dynasty, circa 700-800; marble.
(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)
Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia. LACMA. Through July 12
“Realms of the Dharma” isn’t exactly an exhibition. Instead, it’s a temporary, 14-month installation of Buddhist sculptures, paintings and drawings from the museum’s impressive permanent collection, plus a few additions. It’s worth noting here, though, because almost all of its marvelous pieces were in storage (or traveling) for more than seven years, during the lengthy tear-down of a prior LACMA building and construction of a new one, and much of it will disappear again when the installation closes next summer.
Noah Davis, “40 Acres and a Unicorn,” 2007, acrylic and gouache on canvas.
(Anna Arca)
Noah Davis. UCLA Hammer Museum
A tight survey of 50 works, all made by Noah Davis in the brief span between 2007 and the L.A.-based artist’s untimely death in 2015 at just 32, told a poignant story of rapid artistic growth brutally interrupted. Davis was a painter’s painter, a deeply thoughtful and idiosyncratic Black voice heard by other artists and aficionados, even while still in invigorating development.
Weegee (Arthur Fellig), “The Gay Deceiver, 1939/1950, gelatin silver print. Getty Museum
(Getty Museum)
Queer Lens: A History of Photography. Getty Center
Assembling some 270 photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries, “Queer Lens” looked at work produced after the 1869 invention of the binaries of “heterosexual and homosexual,” just a short generation after the 1839 invention of the camera. Transformations in the expression of gender and sexuality by scores of artists as well-known as Berenice Abbott, Anthony Friedkin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Man Ray and Edmund Teske were tracked along with more than a dozen unknowns.
“Sealstone With a Battle Scene (The Pylos Combat Agate),” Minoan, 1630-1440 BC; banded agate, gold and bronze.
(Jeff Vanderpool)
The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece. Getty Villa. Through Jan. 12
The star of this look into the ancient, not widely known Mycenaean kingdom of Pylos was a tiny agate, barely 1.3 inches wide, making its public debut outside Europe. The exquisitely carved stone, unearthed by archaeologists in 2017, shows two lean but muscled warriors going at it over the sprawled body of a dead comrade. Perhaps made in Crete, the idealized naturalism of a battle scene rendered in shallow three-dimensional space threw a stylistic monkey-wrench into our established understanding of Greek culture 3,500 years ago.
Ken Gonzales-Day digitally erased Illinois Black lynching victim Charlie Mitchell from an 1897 postcard to focus instead on the perpetrators.
(USC Fisher Museum of Art)
Ken Gonzales-Day: History’s “Nevermade.” USC Fisher Museum of Art. Through March 14
The ways in which identities of race, gender and class are erased in a society dominated by straight white patriarchy animates the first mid-career survey of Los Angeles–based artist Ken Gonzales-Day. The riveting centerpiece is his extensive meditation on the American mass-hysteria embodied by the horrific practice of lynching, in which Gonzales-Day employed digital techniques to erase the brutalized victims (and the ropes) in grisly photographs of the murders. Focus shifts the viewer’s gaze toward the perpetrators — an urgent and timely transference, given the shredding of civil society underway today.
Kara Walker deconstructed a monument to Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson for “Unmanned Drone,” as seen at the Brick gallery as part of “Monuments.”
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
Monuments. The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA and the Brick. Through May 3
The nearly two-year delay in opening “Monuments,” an exhibition of toppled Confederate and Jim Crow statues that pairs cautionary art history with thoughtful and poetic retorts by a variety of artists, turned out to give the much anticipated undertaking an especially potent punch. As the Trump Administration restores a white supremacist sheen to “Lost Cause” mythology by renaming military installations after Civil War traitors and returning sculptures and paintings of them to prior perches, from which they had been removed, this sober and incisive analysis of what’s at stake is nothing less than crucial.
Peak moment: As a metaphor of white supremacy, Kara Walker’s transformation of the ancient “man on a horse” motif into a monstrous headless horseman — a Euro-American corpse that tortures the living and refuses to die — resonates loudly.
Installation view of sculptures and a painting by Robert Therrien at the Broad.
(Joshua White / Broad museum)
Robert Therrien: This Is a Story. The Broad. Through April 5
The late Los Angeles-based artist Robert Therrien (1947-2019) had a distinctive, even quirky capacity for teasing out a conceptual space between ordinary domestic objects and their mysterious personal meanings. In 120 paintings, drawings, photographs and especially sculptures, this Therrien exhibition offers objects hovering somewhere between immediately recognizable and perplexingly alien, wryly funny and spiritually profound.
