On May 31 1904, a high-profile MP defected from the Conservative Party and joined its main rival. Not everyone believed his claim to be driven by principle rather than personal ambition. Yet it took two years and an election that cost the Tories over half their seats before he achieved ministerial office in a Liberal government – and another four before he was made its Home Secretary.

By 1924, however, the Conservative Party, far from passing into history as some had feared, was back with a massive overall majority. And the man then appointed its Chancellor of the Exchequer was the very same MP who’d quit the party in such bad odour twenty years before. His name? Winston Churchill.

The point of this story is not to claim Robert Jenrick bears comparison with one of this country’s political giants. Not even his admirers (presuming he still has some after jumping ship to Reform in such farcical fashion ) would attempt to argue that. Nor is it to predict that, a couple of decades from now, Jenrick will be welcomed back into the fold, put in charge of the nation’s finances and eventually made Tory prime minister.

Rather it is to remind us of the Conservative Party’s remarkable resilience. That’s something worth recalling when so many are speculating about its imminent demise in the face of Nigel Farage’s determination, if not to destroy it completely, then at least to ensure that Reform UK replaces it as the main party of the Right.

When Churchill first entered politics, the advent of democracy was understandably regarded by many continental European conservative parties with fear as well as loathing.

Given what was then the overwhelming numerical preponderance of the working class, how could they, as the political wing of their country’s middle and upper classes, possibly hope to win a majority ever again?

Better, they concluded, to cut their losses and abandon first-past-the-post for more proportional electoral systems that would at least ensure their survival and maybe facilitate “bourgeois” coalitions capable of challenging the socialist parties that were, they assumed, bound to win the votes of the newly enfranchised hoi-polloi.

Not so the British Conservatives. Determined to stick with first-past-the-post, they outmanoeuvred (as much by luck as judgement) their Liberal Party rivals, who, in the course of just two decades after their crushing victory in 1906, were overtaken and undone by a Labour Party founded just a few years previously.

In so doing, the Tories became the near-exclusive representative of Britain’s growing, anti-socialist middle class at the same time as winning over around a third of the working class. This was largely by appealing to their aspirations for themselves and their families, to their concern with governing competence and to a love of country that now and then shaded into jingoism and outright xenophobia.

In fact, the Conservatives’ pitch to voters hasn’t changed much over the years – in no small part because it enabled them to become Britain’s “natural party of government”. But it’s precisely because they became the nation’s default option that we sometimes forget that, in the postwar period, there have been two – and now three – occasions on which their long-term future has looked decidedly shaky.

Virtually no one expected the Conservatives to lose the 1945 general election, let alone to see their proudly socialist rivals returned with an overall majority of nearly 150 and the Tories reduced to just under two hundred seats.

Labour, many assumed, had finally come into its electoral inheritance and, unlike Churchill and his stunned colleagues, would now win the peace.

Yet just six years later the Conservatives were back, with a working majority gifted them by an electoral system that saw them bag more seats than Labour despite winning fewer votes overall.

Again, luck as much as judgement played a part: wartime austerity hadn’t yet given way to the West European postwar boom, and Labour’s big beasts were exhausted and fighting amongst themselves.

Equally crucial, however, was the Conservative Party’s compromise with the welfare state and mixed economy ushered in by the Attlee government. It was a compromise effectively forced on a reluctant Churchill by his younger, more centrist, more domestically-focused lieutenants.

Once restored to office, the Tories’ relaxation of wartime controls, encouragement of mass consumerism and delivery of a huge housebuilding programme enabled prime minister Harold Macmillan to remind voters in 1957 that they’d “never had it so good”. To years later, he delivered the party its third consecutive election victory.

Fast forward 40 years or so to 2001, however, and pundits were again wondering whether the Tories could ever recover after the election that year saw Tony Blair score another landslide victory. The Conservative Party finished with well under 200 seats for the second time in a row.

This time its recovery took longer and was admittedly less impressive, even if many on the Right of the party were relieved when, having feinted toward the progressive centre in opposition and finding themselves forced to govern together with the Lib Dems, David Cameron and George Osborne reverted to Thatcherite type once in Downing Street.

The defeat suffered by the party in the wake of the chaos engendered by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, however, is of a different order of magnitude. Never in its long history has the Conservative Party been reduced to so few MPs at Westminster and nor has it ever faced a serious challenge on its Right as well as its Left flank.

True, Kemi Badenoch’s personal ratings and performance seem to be improving. But the Tories are still polling lower than they did in 2024 and far behind Reform UK.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage continues to command massive media attention even when he’s not celebrating his latest new recruit.

Not only that, but his small state, low tax, strong borders, net-zero sceptic, anti-blob, anti-woke, anti-ECHR instincts are very much those of many former and current Conservative voters and politicians. These include Badenoch and her shadow cabinet (although they would never admit it).

It is one reason why those liberal Tories and ex-Tories hoping Jenrick’s departure will see the party somehow tack back to what they see as the centre-Right are probably fooling themselves.

For all that, it is still too soon to write off the Conservative Party. It remains the official Opposition to a failing Labour Government at Westminster. It maintains an infrastructure at local and national level. It retains (just) the support of much of Britain’s influential print media. Its donations have by no means dried up. And, as we have seen, it has a long history of recovery.

So long, then, as the recent trickle of defectors to Reform – one that now includes Andrew Rosindell – doesn’t turn into a flood, the loss of Robert Jenrick, while wounding, should be survivable.

Moreover, contrary to what’s fast becoming conventional wisdom, Jenrick’s departure hasn’t put paid to the possibility of some kind of stand-down agreement between the Tories and Reform should that seem like the best way of beating the Labour-Lib Dem-Green bloc.

If sworn enemies like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany could sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact back in 1939, then Farage and Badenoch (or whoever replaces her) should surely be able to negotiate a non-aggression deal of their own in 2029. Whether or not it, too, would eventually end in tears is, of course, another matter.

Originally published at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/19/winston-churchills-defection-conservatives-robert-jenrick/