LONDON — Reform’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick describes the likely next Labour leader Andy Burnham as “continuity Keir Starmer” — but acknowledged that the newly elected MP for Makerfield will enjoy a honeymoon period if he ascends to No. 10 next month as expected.
“He’s basically Keir Starmer in a dodgy polo shirt, and he stands for exactly the same kind of politics,” Jenrick said Tuesday in an interview for a special episode of POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast. The Reform politician added: “It’s just vibes, isn’t it? It’s basically the same politics that has failed this country for more than just two years, for a very long time, dressed up in a slightly more human way.”
Jenrick, previously a Conservative leadership candidate who defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform earlier this year, said that the public might take a fresh look at Burnham in the wake of his victory in last week’s Makerfield election and Starmer’s resignation as prime minister earlier this week. But Jenrick argued that he would have as difficult a time as Starmer solving the problems facing Britain — which Jenrick chalked up to poor implementation of Brexit by his own former party as well as by Labour.
“They’re going to give Andy Burnham a chance, I understand that,” Jenrick said. “But I suspect that faced with the realities of government and the scale of the challenges that the country faces, he will very quickly come unstuck, and we’ll back in a similar position. And those people who voted for us in their droves in a place like Makerfield at the local elections will vote Reform come the general election.”
He cited the high recent turnover of prime ministers — whoever succeeds Starmer will be the seventh in the decade since the 2016 Brexit vote — as evidence that the aftermath of leaving the EU had been badly managed by both main parties. “They (the public) can’t believe this merry-go-round that the Labour Party and the last Conservative government — of which I was a part — have forced upon the country,” Jenrick said.
Brexit blues
Jenrick admitted that the country had “by and large” continued to decline after Brexit, despite promises from Farage and other Leave campaigners at the time that Brussels was to blame for economic stagnation in the U.K.
“The economy got worse, migration got worse, public services got worse,” Jenrick acknowledged. Yet he insisted that the Brexit fundamentals remained intact, just unfulfilled since 2016: “People had intended to secure consistently lower immigration in the Leave vote, and we have not managed to stop the (Channel) boats … We need more radical answers to our problems, and that is what Reform stands for.”
Yet voters in three significant recent by-elections — in Makerfield, Gorton and Denton and Caerphilly — have spurned Reform candidates in favor of other parties. Reform also failed to win Aberdeen South last week, coming third behind the Tories and the SNP.
Farage nevertheless has called for a new general election, with his party topping national polls. Jenrick, in his interview, argued that Reform is “the main center-right party in this country now — we will be ready when the general election comes, whether it’s in a few months’ time or it’s in three years’ time.”
The party has come in for criticism over the candidates it fields, including from donors. Farage has admitted that Robert Kenyon, the Reform candidate in Makerfield who lost to Burnham, was hobbled at the polls after social media posts demeaning women were reported early in the campaign.
Jenrick, however, credited Kenyon’s performance in the campaign, saying: “I don’t think there’s anything to be gained in criticizing somebody who stuck their head above the parapet in the most prominent by-election in modern times and conducted himself very well.”
Jenrick also said he isn’t concerned about the rise of Restore UK, the breakaway party to the right of Reform UK that has been taking slices off its vote share since its founder Rupert Lowe fell out with Farage last year. Jenrick suggested that the two tribes might bury the hatchet in the interest of winning national power.
New MP for Makerfield and likely next Labour leader Andy Burnham celebrates after his swearing-in at the Houses of Parliament in London on June 22, 2026. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images“It seems curious to me that anyone who shares my fundamental view that the next election is existential, that we really have one last chance to fix the country on many different levels, not least the state of our economy, but also some of the cultural and immigration challenges that we face, would vote for a party which has no viable path to winning the next election,” Jenrick said.
Internal issues
In his interview, Jenrick defended a £5 million gift to Farage from a Thailand-based crypto billionaire, Christopher Harborne, that has forced Reform into a parliamentary standards inquiry. Farage has said the gift was for his personal security. “It was a perfectly legitimate thing to do and a choice that, that he made at the time,” Jenrick told POLITICO. “There were certainly no strings attached to the individual concerned.”
Jenrick has had some turf-war brushes since joining Reform with Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesman, and has clashed over Yusuf’s pledge to remove and in some cases deport foreign nationals living in social housing, and over what would count as the threshold for them to remain in existing accommodation. That breach seems to have been resolved — in Yusuf’s favor.
Jenrick described their relationship as “positive” and added: “Look, I respect him.” On immigration, he argued that they were “basically making the same point, which is that we’re going to abolish indefinite leave to remain.”
He added: “If you don’t meet our economic tests, then you’re gonna have to leave the country. And if you happen to be in social housing, it’s very, very likely that you will not meet our economic tests because by definition you’re reliant on the state. So if you’re not a Brit and you’re in social housing, you’re going to be given a short period to leave that housing. We have said three months.”
Challenged on where that would leave families with one immigrant and a partner or spouse with U.K. citizenship, or children born into families housed under the existing rules, Jenrick responded that families could find accommodation in the private sector, and insisted that priority should be given to British citizens, who currently face wait-lists. “You can’t say in all good conscience [that a] British military veteran or a British victim of domestic abuse should be living on the streets or in precarious temporary accommodation,” he argued, “and then there’s somebody who’s a more recent arrival to the U.K. who’s not a British citizen who gets that housing.”
The prospect of large-scale deportations of people settled in the U.K. who cannot afford to pay for housing remains one of Reform’s most controversial policies. Jenrick repeated arguments that many would choose to leave voluntarily, and said he was in favor of mass deportations if necessary.
“Will there also be the need for some people to be deported? Yes, absolutely, and that happens in every other country in the world,” he said. “It’s a curious mindset that we’ve got ourselves in in this country where we seem to be prioritizing the interests of people who are not British citizens.”
Despite stark disagreements with his colleagues in parliament, Jenrick said he maintains good relations across the benches — but said he would he prefer a farewell pint with Starmer or a welcome one with Burnham to a drink with his Treasury rival, Chancellor Rachel Reeves. “I would go for a Burnham,” he said. “And yes, I would go for a consolation drink with Rachel Reeves … but we would have to spend a lot of time trying to find a pub that she isn’t barred from.”
Peter Snowdon contributed to this report. Listen to the full Westminster Insider interview here.