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He lost the last battle for the Conservative Party leadership to Kemi Badenoch, but by common consent inside and outside the party, Badenoch has failed to make much of an impression. The Tories are still languishing in the polls, failing to reach 20% for ten polls running as I write. Given the deep unpopularity of the Labour government, they will feel they should be doing better than that. Of course, part of the problem for both parties is the surge of Reform, which is now routinely recording 6-10 point leads and hasn't been behind in a single national poll since mid-April. It's no longer realistic to call that a blip.

Jenrick is generally seen as pretty right-wing even by Tory standards, and he is sympathetic to many Reform policies.¹ However, he started out in politics as a centrist in the party, and that's doubtless given him a better idea than some about what mainstream voters might find appealing. His recent video in which he confronted fare dodgers at a Tube station was a political stunt, absolutely -- but an awful lot of people who wouldn't normally support him found themselves sympathising. I freely own up to being one of them. In my experience, rail fare dodgers are only rarely those who genuinely struggle to afford the cost.
¹ Though an as yet under-explored aspect of Reform's appeal is that its platform includes some quite left-wing economic policies...

And now he's weighed in against the conviction of Hamit Coksun, who burned a Quran outside the Turkish Embassy while shouting insults about Islam. Again, this is a clever political move by Jenrick, as quite a few people have expressed concern that this conviction comes close to reviving (at least de facto) the blasphemy law that was finally taken off the books in England in 2008. That concern comes from well beyond the usual right-wing tweeters: for example, the National Secular Society, which is hardly a mouthpiece for the alt-right, has contributed significantly towards Coksun's legal fees.

People have wondered for a while whether Jenrick would jump ship to Reform, but after the last week or so I think that's probably unlikely. I think he's clever enough to realise that Reform is held together by Nigel Farage, and that when Farage finally goes it's likely to splinter badly. I think what he wants to do is to take the Conservatives in a direction where they can get at least some support from "old Labour" voters, who are often quite socially conservative. I still don't like Jenrick and I would never vote for him myself. But I don't think it's entirely out of the question that he could be the next PM.