How Robert Jenrick's former Tory colleagues revealed their true colours after his sacking

“The British public are tired of political psychodrama and so am I.” So said Kemi Badenoch as she kicked off another round of political psychodrama.

In a classic moment of “you can’t quit – you’re fired!”, the Conservative leader (if that is the word) expelled Robert Jenrick from the Tory party for the crime of planning to quit the Tory party.

Some months ago, I described the Conservatives as a “clown car”. I now fear that this comparison was unfair to the noble and dignified profession of grease-painted artistes. Apparently the irrefutable proof of Jenrick’s impending defection was when someone found a copy of his resignation speech lying around – which if true makes this drama rather less House of Cards and more Three Stooges.

READ MORE: Reform's new leader named in Scotland as Robert Jenrick sacked for 'plotting to defect'

Robert Jenrick shakes hands with Kemi Badenoch after she beat him in the Conservative party leadership contest (Picture: Stefan Rousseau) | PA

Incendiary rhetoric about race

One way or another, however, the Conservative-Reform bun fight looks like it is going to run and run.

It speaks volumes that Jenrick was kept within the Conservative inner circle until now, despite his clownish antics and increasingly incendiary rhetoric around race over the past year.

If Jenrick’s complaint about the lack of “white faces” during a visit to Birmingham last March was not enough to trigger any reflection amongst the Tory high command then, it is hard to ascribe much principle to his expulsion today.

READ MORE: Farage tells potential Holyrood defectors to 'get in touch within days'

As I write, it remains to be seen whether Jenrick (as is widely assumed) will be embraced by Nigel Farage and the Reform party. In August of last year, Farage declared “Jenrick is a fraud”. At the time, this was seen as criticism. Perhaps in retrospect it was intended as a compliment.

It is easy to see how each defection from the Tories to Reform weakens the former and gives the latter more credibility as the new party of the (far) right. There is surely a point, however, where you have to ask whether voters looking for change – and who handily ejected the Tories less than two years ago – will stomach a Reform party stuffed to the brim with failed former Conservative ministers.

READ MORE: Migrants welcome? How Reform is turning Scotland into an unfriendly country for people like my two friends

A positive political vision?

What none of this cloak-and-cream-pie scrapping between the Tories and Reform does, of course, is help people who just want working services or a positive vision for our country.

The far-right are tapping into dissatisfaction with our politics, but if this latest crisis shows anything, it is that they are only going to offer up more chaos if they get a hand on the levers of power.

Whether in Scotland or across the rest of the UK, there is a genuine appetite for challenge to our current governments – but one that is based on ideas rather than incessant internal drama. Many former Conservative voters will be looking at this latest eruption and see it as the last straw. Other, more moderate parties are available.

If Kemi Badenoch says that she and the British public are tired of political psychodrama, the same may not be universally true of her remaining Tory colleagues. Moments after the news broke of Jenrick’s defenestration, I overheard his colleagues in parliament gossiping – about who was going to get his office.

One clown may have departed, but the circus goes on.

Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland