Robert Jenrick has said he would hope to detain and deport people who arrive in the UK on small boats “within days” if he wins the Conservative leadership race and the next general election. The former immigration minister said he was “open” to a cap restricting immigration to fewer than 10,000 people a year and shared his hopes of reimposing the Rwanda scheme. Jenrick dramatically quit Rishi Sunak’s government, claiming the then prime minister had failed to take a tough approach on immigration, and on Friday told a Westminster audience the British political system was “either unwilling or unable” to do the “basic duty” to “secure our borders”.
Immigration appeared to be the focus of his campaign, as he said his position on leaving the European convention on human rights was “crystal clear”, and said the Conservatives had lost the general election because of a “cycle of broken promises” on the issue. “I have been very concerned for a very long time about the state failing to deliver the core functions on behalf of the British people, but that came home very vividly for me at the Home Office,” Jenrick said. “I walked into a Home Office in ashes.” The state “couldn’t deport people back to their home country” and was “spending billions of pounds on hotels”, he said. In his speech, which he had memorised, Jenrick reiterated his hopes to help the Tories win the next general election “as a broad church”.
But only if the party could “show that we understand that we made mistakes and we’ve learned from those mistakes, if we show that we understand the challenges facing our country and that uniquely, we have the serious answers and the serious leadership to stand up to them, if we show that we are united again.” Jenrick is facing James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat, Mel Stride, and Priti Patel, all of whom are former government ministers, in the challenge to succeed Sunak as Tory leader. With questions over Suella Braverman’s future in the Conservative party, Jenrick refused to say whether Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson would be welcome into the party under his leadership. Jenrick did, however – like the prime minister Keir Starmer – say he wanted to “back the police” following the riots after the Southport attacks, “to ensure that they can take the robust action they need against these individuals and against people like them in all of the incidents we have seen in recent months, right across the country”.