Robert Jenrick has fallen into the same trap as ‘something of the night’ Tory leader Michael Howard

Robert Jenrick likes to tell the story of how his wife Michal Berkner has the habit of reading to him at night. Her chosen material does not include any critically acclaimed novels or poems. Rather Michal reads out criticisms on the internet posted by members of the public concerning reports of her husband’s political activities.

Jenrick joked that it is his wife’s firm but loving way of keeping him in touch with what people really think about him. If Michal read to her husband after his dramatic and chaotic defection from the Tories to Reform, it would have been the stuff of nightmares.

Social media is awash with responses – most of them highly unflattering. No one can accuse Mr Jenrick of lacking one of the qualities needed to get to the top in politics: ruthlessness.

Machiavelli himself would have blushed at the way that 24 hours after sitting round Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet table, he publicly trashed her and his erstwhile Tory colleagues. His performance at a press conference with Nigel Farage was less of a political speech and more of a volley of pepper spray in the faces of his Tory comrades-in-arms of the previous day.

Farage, no stranger to shameless stunts, looked taken aback by the brazenness of Jenrick’s conduct. But if Jenrick thought he would be hailed as the new hero of the political right, he was mistaken.

Even Tory MPs and others who share his hardline views on immigration and the culture wars recoiled at his behaviour. Most politicians, from all shades of opinion, know that being a successful leader is not just about policy.

As Britain’s pre-eminent political biographer Sir Anthony Seldon maintains, it hinges on key personal traits: character, dignity and morality. In putting naked ambition before all else, Jenrick has failed on all three.

By contrast, in acting in such a bold and straightforward manner, Badenoch has passed the test. I fear Jenrick is about to discover that when the public has made its mind up about a politician’s character, rightly or wrongly, there is no coming back.

It reminds me of the fate of another aspiring right-wing prime minister, Michael Howard. Howard led the Conservatives from 2003 to 2005 but never came close to winning power.

Like Jenrick, he had a sharp intelligence and ambition. Like Jenrick, his right-wing stance on a wide range of issues was popular among many Conservative supporters.

But like Jenrick, he was similarly seen as appearing too harsh, taking positions more out of calculation than conviction. It was summed up in a damning put-down by Howard’s Tory foe, fellow right-winger Ann Widdecombe, who fell out with him in 1997.

She took revenge by saying Howard had “something of the night about him”. It was cruel, and in the view of many who knew Howard, including me, unfair.

Moreover, it was seen as stemming, in part at least, from his family roots in the Transylvania region of Romania, and its association with the Dracula myth. But just or unjust, it stuck, and contributed to Howard’s defeat to Tony Blair in the 2005 election.

As far as I know, Jenrick has no horror novel connections. But he does share Howard’s image problem, his tin ear and complexion.

Ironically, this has been exaggerated by the diet and fitness regime he took up a year or so ago to make him look lean and fit for power. He looks more cadaverous than ripped. And to be told you have “something of the night” about you is not what you want to hear. At bedtime or any other.