Do we like them?

Do we like Robert Jenrick?

Our score: 3 out of 10. Mixed on both tests: contested remarks on race and climate and an unresolved donations inquiry, with little verified good to set against them.

Jenrick's year has been one long plot twist. On 15 January Kemi Badenoch sacked him from the Tory shadow cabinet, saying she had “irrefutable evidence” of disloyalty, and he turned up at a Reform press conference the same day. He mercilessly attacked his old party on the way out, which is one way to burn a bridge.

Nigel Farage made him Reform's shadow chancellor in February, and his headline idea was restoring the two-child benefit cap in full, which the New Statesman noted runs against Farage's own shifting line. So he isn't just along for the ride; he's pulling the party in a harder direction on welfare.

The old baggage is Westferry. In 2020, as housing secretary, he approved a £1bn east London scheme for Tory donor Richard Desmond, and Desmond gave the Tories £12,000 soon after. The decision was later reported as unlawful, and the row never really left him.

The newer one is money. ITV reported in July that police are assessing alleged donations of nearly £40,000 to his Tory leadership bid in 2024. Jenrick says he didn't know the source and calls the probe a smear, and no finding has been made, so treat it as unresolved.

On the harm check, it's patchy. In October 2025 a recording leaked of him saying he saw no other white faces in part of Birmingham. Andy Street called it disgraceful, while Jenrick said he was criticising a lack of integration. He has also turned hard against net zero, and on trans issues his own words were hedged rather than hostile: he backed the idea of a trans MP but wanted care around single-sex settings.

The good stuff is thin, and that's honestly the whole list: nothing we could verify in the way of charity or personal kindness turned up. He said in 2021 he was “fully supportive” of electing a trans MP, which counts for something. But we'd be cautious, given the culture-war focus and the donation questions still hanging over him.