Last weekend, in answer to the question “What was the last book you read?”, Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick said A Tale of Two Cities. Lots to unpack there. First, some context: it was in the “quickfire questions” section of an interview in the Daily Mail, among the readers of which there may be one or two members of the Conservative party. Possibly even more. So, as a politics professional, Jenrick will have been focused on coming across well to them.
It’s tricky for him, though, because that’s not the same thing as coming across well in general. It’s not the wider public he’s courting. Nor even Tory voters. No, he has to appeal to a constituency of people who make those who merely vote Conservative seem like hand-wringing woke hipsters. This is a group that, only two years ago, confidently selected Liz Truss to be prime minister. Admittedly the only other item on the menu was Rishi Sunak, but that still looks like a perverse choice to anyone sensible. Sunak has many detractors but there’s only one of them who thinks Liz Truss was a better prime minister than him and that person’s name is Liz Truss.
Nevertheless it’s this group whose support Jenrick must obtain, while at the same time remaining relatively plausible to everyone else because, if he wins, he’ll eventually need some of their votes too. You can’t go too mad and start advocating shooting dogs for urinating against war memorials or putting actors in prison for mumbling on TV. That’s only going to be a short-term gain. This is what was in everyone’s minds when the Jenrick team sat down to help him answer the question “What was the last book you read?”
By the way, it is no reflection on Jenrick that I’m suggesting his answer may be untrue. Let’s not hold that against him – especially when there’s so much else to choose from. Politicians have to lie a bit in that sort of questionnaire. They’re trying to project an image and a snapshot of their reading habits won’t always do that. What if he’s just finished The Flowering Shrub Expert by DG Hessayon? Is he supposed to admit that and get pigeonholed as the shrub candidate?
“So what shall we say?” they must have pondered. “How do we want you to come across?” The fact that the conversation that ensued ended in the selection of A Tale of Two Cities is, in a quiet way, one of the most inexplicable things in the universe.
Look, I get that A Tale of Two Cities is reputed to be a good book. I have not read it, but Charles Dickens is a smashing writer and it is one of his most successful novels. And he is long dead and of stellar reputation so A Tale of Two Cities is definitely Proper Literature. And English literature at that – doubly English as it is written in English by a person who is also English, something I imagine the Tory faithful would approve of. It’s not some immigrant Pole like Joseph Conrad coming over here and taking all the novelist work.
Also, because it’s Dickens, it feels, as English literature goes, relatively approachable. There are more Disney and Muppets versions of Dickens’s books than there are of George Eliot, Thomas Hardy or EM Forster. So, in defence of his choice of response, Jenrick is proclaiming himself a fan of highly respectable, yet relatively accessible, UK-based heritage fiction, all of which is thoroughly “on brand”.
The trouble is that it is so “on brand” that it’s a ridiculous answer to the question. It’s like responding to “What did you do at the weekend?” by saying “I spent it cutting taxes for hard-working families”. I don’t doubt that Jenrick has at some point read A Tale of Two Cities. But he is suggesting that he’s just read it. That in the middle of an incredibly busy and professionally challenging time in his life, he’s waded through a long and dense Victorian novel. That seems really unlikely and odd. Does he want to come across as odd? Possibly. After all, James Cleverly advocated the Tories becoming “more normal” and was knocked out of the leadership race a week later.
It’s been a notable aspect of this contest that, even though the Tory membership has not yet been involved and it’s all been in the hands of MPs, the candidates have been eliminated in reverse order of shitness. (That’s if you don’t count Priti Patel, which I think is wise in all circumstances.) First Mel Stride, who seemed like a perfectly capable governmental figure. Not amazing, but someone you might trust to book a table in a restaurant. Then Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly, who I suppose are fine and would certainly know how to say “I don’t think that’s the real question here” when asked why they’d forgotten to book.
Now we’re left with Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, who will book nothing but flights to Rwanda. She says some pretty extreme stuff. So does he nowadays. He used to say some much more moderate stuff but that was a different time. Nowadays he says he wants Britain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights despite being a human himself.
But why did he say A Tale of Two Cities? Maybe he doesn’t mean to imply that he read it recently. Perhaps he’s suggesting that he studied it at school and hasn’t read a book since. Is he pushing the old “Britain is tired of experts” agenda? Would the membership like that? “Get your nose out of that tome, Starmer, you speccy twat, and help me throw some immigrants in the sea!” Is that the idea? If so, I’m not sure saying A Tale of Two Cities is sufficient on its own to launch his radical new anti-intellectual approach.
It’s so baffling that I’m forced to entertain the notion that he gave an honest answer to the question. That, weirdly, and with everything else that’s going on in his life, Jenrick has genuinely just finished reading A Tale of Two Cities. If that’s true, I really think he should have made something up.
