Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick has pundits scratching their heads after he claimed the last book he read was Charles Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities. The revelation came during a “quickfire questions” segment of an interview with the Daily Mail, a publication known to have a significant Conservative readership. Jenrick’s literary name-drop is being parsed for hidden political messaging as he vies for support from party members.
Appealing to the Base While Maintaining Broad Appeal
Insiders suggest Jenrick faces a delicate balancing act – he must win over the Conservative party faithful, a group that just two years ago backed Liz Truss for prime minister over Rishi Sunak, without alienating the wider electorate. His team likely agonized over how to thread this needle with his book choice response.
The Prestige of Classic English Literature
On one level, citing A Tale of Two Cities aligns Jenrick with a pillar of the English literary canon. Dickens’ work is unimpeachably respectable yet still accessible, given its many pop culture adaptations. An appreciation for homegrown heritage and tradition could play well with Conservative stalwarts.
“It’s not some immigrant Pole like Joseph Conrad coming over here and taking all the novelist work,” quipped one unnamed Tory strategist, perhaps only half in jest.
Doubts About the Timing and Motive
However, many find it implausible that Jenrick would have just completed the dense 19th century epic amid his hectic leadership bid and MP duties. Skeptics argue the Tale of Two Cities namedrop seems more calculated than genuine—so on-the-nose it verges on self-parody.
“It’s like responding to ‘What did you do this weekend?’ by saying ‘I spent it cutting taxes for hardworking families,'” snarked comedian David Mitchell in The Observer. “I don’t doubt Jenrick has read A Tale of Two Cities at some point. But recently? That seems really unlikely and odd.”
Currying Favor with an Anti-Intellectual Strain?
One theory posits that by reaching so far back for his last read, Jenrick is subtly signaling an “anti-expert,” populist sensibility in line with the “Britain is tired of experts” rhetoric of the Brexit campaign.
Per Mitchell’s cheeky caricature: “Get your nose out of that tome, Starmer, you speccy twat, and help me throw some immigrants in the sea!”
But pundits caution that merely mentioning Dickens is insufficient to cement this persona, which could backfire beyond the Tory base regardless.
An Honest Answer Would Be Most Stunning
Ultimately, the most shocking possibility is that Jenrick’s Tale of Two Cities claim is simply the unvarnished truth—that amid his punishing political and personal schedule, he indeed carved out time to savor a hefty Victorian classic.
If that’s the case, critics contend fessing up to lighter beach reading fare, or even a policy-relevant nonfiction title, would have been the shrewder move. As is, Jenrick’s puzzling answer has become its own story, launching a cottage industry of overanalysis and mockery—perhaps not the takeaway his team intended.
With ballots for the next Tory leader due soon, time will tell if Jenrick’s literary selection was a tale of two strategies: one to court his Parliamentary colleagues now and another to woo rank-and-file members in the final contest to come. For the moment, it’s left the political class with a mystery worthy of Dickens himself.
