Is ex-immigration minister Robert Jenrick on manoeuvres? He certainly looked the part as he waxed lyrical to a crowd of under 35s at the Onward’s ‘After Hours’ event in a Westminster pub. Jenrick said it was no surprise youngsters are struggling to get on the housing ladder. ‘You’re absolutely right to say that the housing crisis today is also an immigration crisis,’ he crowed to the audience. ‘You can’t have mass migration and an answer to the housing crisis.’ But while the Tory MP has been championing housing and migration issues over the last few years, tonight’s focus was on the Tory issue with younger voters.

‘We are outliers in Europe and beyond in our inability to win over young people,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t see a future for our party unless we help people like you across the country to have a genuine stake in this country.’ And he might be right. YouGov polling last year found that as little as 1 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds plan to vote Conservative at the next election.

Jenrick’s latest mission is to advocate for legislation that Michael Gove and his fellow Tory MP Rachel MacLean were trying to pass: the scrapping of EU nutrient neutrality laws, which require new housing developments in certain areas to not add more ‘nutrient pollution’ to the water catchment. Gove believes this would allow the construction of 100,00 homes before the next election. It is ‘the single best thing that we could do as a parliament,’ Jenrick said.

But, on the topic of Brexit, the Tory MP sounded rather despondent:

After leaving the European Union, we have the levers in our hands to [bring net migration down]. You just have to have the political will to exercise them and to do it properly. What we actually did was we pulled them in the wrong direction and created a system which is even more liberal than the one we had when we were in the EU.

Jenrick’s speech tonight coincides with the news that migrants could be offered cash to go to Rwanda. A separate deal struck between the UK and Rwanda would be the first of its kind, aiming to remove migrants by paying them to leave Britain to go somewhere other than their origin country. While he didn’t make mention of this plan, the ex-immigration minister told his audience: ‘I think flights will go to Rwanda,’ adding: ‘I’m not interested in symbolism.’

The night wasn’t completely downbeat, however. Apologising for his lateness to the packed London pub, he quipped: ‘I had to vote in the Budget tonight and I know I do rebelling quite a lot, but I felt that that was a step too far.’ Mr S can imagine Rishi Sunak was also glad for Jenrick’s loyalty, given the rather eventful week he’s had…

And though Onward were hosting, the former immigration minister didn’t shy away from poking fun at its director. ‘I’m grateful to…Seb [Payne] for the work that he’s doing. I thought Seb might be here this evening. But Theresa May said she’d seen him in Maidenhead earlier today…’

Will Onward produce its first MP sometime soon? Mr S can’t answer that. Will the new Tory plan to pay migrants to leave help sort Britain’s immigration crisis? Time will tell. And will Jenrick’s push against ‘NIMBYism’ win over young voters in time for the election? The Tories will certainly be hoping so…