Robert Jenrick latest: New Reform MP launches scathing attack on Tories as he joins Farage’s party after sacking

Robert Jenrick will join Reform UK’s front-line team, Nigel Farage said, while the defector claimed that Reform was “building and recruiting” a team of people whom the two main parties had “ignored and almost locked out politics”.

Mr Farage said: “I think Rob coming will bring a lot more people and voters to us. I think this is actually a very big moment, and that’s why we talked about it for a long time.”

He admitted it had taken him a long time to become convinced that Mr Jenrick’s conversion was genuine.

“I thought perhaps he was doing it for political advantage within the Conservative Party to become leader,” he said. “I had my doubts, but I’ve begun to believe since the summer that actually this guy has been on a genuine journey, is viewing the country very differently.”

At least 27 local authorities have asked to delay elections this year amid a government reorganisation drive, according to administrators.

Dozens of district and county council ballots across England could be pushed back as officials seek to deliver structural changes as part of a shake-up to local government.

Opposition critics have said Labour is “running scared” of voters after ministers said they would authorise delays if councils had concerns about their capacity to introduce reforms in time.

But Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer defended the Government’s plans and said the prospect of postponements was “a common sense question” of whether to go forward with elections in cases where the local authority is due to undergo changes.

According to data compiled by the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA), some 27 – or more than a third – of the 63 eligible local authorities have sought a delay to either district or county council votes this year.

Others were yet to make a decision on whether to ask for a postponement ahead of the request deadline at midnight on Thursday.

Tory MP Andrew Griffiths, shadow secretary for business and trade, has affirmed that the Conservatives remain united despite Robert Jenrick’s defection.

“I came into politics from business. I know there’s no ‘I’ in team.

“In the face of the epic damage the socialists in Downing Street are doing, we are not short of reasons for @Conservatives to be united.

“Leadership involves laying down the line.”

Nigel Farage says Robert Jenrick will not be allowed to disagree with him in public.

Answering a question from The Independent’s Kate Devlin, he said: “The only rule I have as leader is that we have our disagreements, we have our arguments, we have our rows behind closed doors.

“People in politics who have disputes in public with me generally don’t tend to do terribly well.”

Nigel Farage insisted he had not offered Mr Jenrick a rank, title, position or money.

Mr Jenrick said: “Nobody leaves a party which they’re the bookies’ favourite to be leader out of ambition.

“You do this out of conviction. I’ve done this today because I’m convinced it’s the right thing to do for my constituents, and to the country.”

Robert Jenrick has said defecting to Reform UK was a difficult decision, and not one that he took lightly, but he was convinced it was the right thing to do for the country.

Denying he had ambitions to take Mr Farage’s job as party leader, he said: “Whatever the bookies say about being leader of the Tory party, I’ve done it because I think Nigel is the man to lead this country.”