Boris Johnson cannot afford to spend political capital on Robert Jenrick – he isn’t Dominic Cummings

The Jenrick affair, if we can call it that, is an unwelcome distraction for a prime minister and a government already having to endure sinking public confidence and support

According to Google, “Robert Jenrick Richard Desmond” is ranked at number 13 in its list of searches, sandwiched between “National Lottery results lotto results” and “FTSE 100 stocks”, and much lower than searches about the job cuts at Royal Mail, air-bridge destinations and The Great British Sewing Bee.

This tells us a couple of things. For one, that the still relatively obscure secretary of state for housing, communities and local government isn’t the first thing on the mind of the public. Jenrick is not yet in the Dominic Cummings league. But it also suggests that the behaviour of Jenrick is starting to gain some public traction. That accords with that trendy thing called common sense, what with Jenrick being on the front of the Daily Mail and attracting more unwelcome political scrutiny.

The Jenrick affair, if we can call it that, is an unwelcome distraction for Boris Johnson, with the government already having to endure sinking public confidence and support.

It is true that no one is making any allegation that Jenrick made any personal gain from his contacts with the property developer Richard Desmond, and Jenrick has had nothing but trouble from it.

However, this apparent chumminess between a Conservative minister and a billionaire property developer isn’t the image this “people’s government” is seeking to project. It looks like social housing was also an issue in play, at a time of great shortage. More than anything, it looks like one (supposed) metropolitan establishment has simply taken over from another one, using a web of insider contacts looking after its own.

As with the Cummings business it stinks of hypocrisy: one (planning) rule for them, but another for those of us unable to gain access to a high-ranking politician. Although a £12,000 donation to the Tories is small change to a billionaire such as Desmond, it is a fantastical amount to most people in the country. Don’t forget that more low-income voters opted for the Conservatives than Labour at the last election.

Unluckily for Jenrick, he is not central to the construction of what we might call the Johnson Project in the way that its architect, Dominic Cummings, plainly is. Johnson doesn’t want to hand Labour another scalp and add to the impression of an administration disintegrating by the week, but neither is Johnson going to expend vast amounts of political capital on protecting Jenrick. He can’t afford to anyway because he’s used it all up on Cummings.

You may also recall Jenrick was involved in allegations about breaking the lockdown rules earlier in the coronavirus crisis, although the coverage of that was overshadowed by more pressing problems at the time. An MP since only 2014, Jenrick looks over-promoted, would seem to lack judgement, and gets into too many scrapes. He is eminently dispensable.

Thus far, Jenrick has survived, but he won’t if the Tory grassroots and his colleagues in the Commons think he is doing them more harm than good, and the affair drags on. It was interesting to hear the senior backbencher Bernard Jenkin offering Jenrick tepid support, but he may not be a reliable bellwether. Labour’s Steve Reed has done a good job in dragging facts and documentation out of Jenrick, and they’re not finished with him yet.

If I were Johnson, I’d not want to have to defend the case of Jenrick to Keir Starmer at PMQs. No doubt the Mail and the rest of the media will have more on the complicated but unedifying story of the Westferry development as we head into the weekend.