His Trumpian tribute act is tragic and he sounds like a sinister Alan Partridge.
Robert Jenrick can’t figure out that attacking a heckler is wrong (Image: Getty)
Chief among phenomena sure to irritate me to distraction is the British adoption of American habits. I mutter to myself in English pubs when I hear a punter ask whether they can “get a pint of Guinness”, convinced that “get” is a linguistic grey squirrel savaging “have” in a rapacious fashion that will soon see it extinct. I don’t actually know if this is an American thing, as some colonial comrades prefer the even more ridiculous phrase “I’ll do a Guinness”, which makes me fear for the pint and its future of PTSD. I can only hope that those English who’ve started “get”-ing a pint by Americanisation or other means are immune to “do”-ing one.
This might be a forlorn wish, as it’s now obvious that my countrymen aren’t resistant to an even viler behaviour that’s popularised itself across the Atlantic, exemplified in recent days by Robert Jenrick, who’s yanked the Trumpian tactic of cruelly ridiculing one’s enemies as far as I might expect from The Donald, as opposed to an aspiring British chancellor.
Speaking in response to a no doubt irritating heckler being shoved onto the floor by her neck while a pensioner at the very least tried to hit her with a crutch, Jenrick said “boo-hoo”.
Disturbing footage of the scrum at Reform UK’s Birmingham conference on Saturday showed what looked like a mob rounding on a woman. Because it was.
The same day footage showed another heckler, again female, having her hair pulled and face grabbed while another elderly man appeared to hit her in the head. Again with a crutch. This behaviour was thuggish; it doesn’t matter what the heckler shouted.
Not for Jenrick, though, who appeared on Sky News to say of the first clip: “You take your chances if you go to a party conference and try to mess it up.”
He said she should “get a life”, a phrase that came uncomfortably from his lips, as though he was a dad desperately trying to appeal to the children he thinks we are with what he imagines is a fashionable phrase.
His tragic mimicry of a man who never has and never will have to appeal to English voters even featured a dodgy Donald-shaped double-down as he also appeared on LBC to say of the second clip: “Let me think how sympathetic I am towards that person. Not at all.
“[She] infiltrates a party conference, stands on a chair, screams abuse at the leader of a party, tries to disrupt a party conference – and then she’s moaning that a pensioner knocked her on the head with a crutch.
“I mean, come on, get a life. Like, you take your chances, don’t you? I have zero sympathy.”
The fact that Jenrick’s new “get a life” catchphrase makes him sound like Alan Partridge shouldn’t distract from the disgusting reality of his behaviour.
He’s chosen to speak like this. It would have been very easy to condemn the behaviour of Reform members but defend their frustration.
It’s the sort of thing that would make me kick him out of the party. But it’s too late to expect that from Nigel Farage as there’s no way the man who’d be his chancellor in government says such things twice in the broadcast media without consent from the personality central to Reform UK.
Jenrick’s responses aren’t just pathetic posturing that make him look like a budget Trump tribute act; they’re a moral blow to the new Right of British politics.
I expect the scenes that horrified me this weekend to be offered up by the black block of Antifa, not supposedly patriotic Brits supporting a mainstream political party.
During one of the scrums, Nigel Farage stood on stage shouting “boring”, which will no doubt be seized upon to compare him to Oswald Mosley, whose fascist rally trained spotlights on disruptors before British Union of Fascists thugs waded into the crowd to beat them up and remove them from Kensington Olympia in 1934.
Such comparisons are ridiculous and it’s unclear how much Farage could see from the stage. I’d guess the view was unlikely to be as clear as footage taken right next to the scuffle.
And, polarised though our politics are, it’s perfectly possible to criticise Reform UK without linking them to fascism. It’s also possible to do so without being among the loonier elements of the Left.
These are facts I trust I demonstrate when I tell Mr Farage that this immoral response to a woman being roughed up may well have lost his party my vote.
What a sorry shame it will be if the alternative to the Blairite nightmare from which Britain has struggled to wake itself continues in perpetuity because grown men can’t figure out that it’s wrong to physically attack a woman for using her voice.