Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has announced she has sacked the shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick with immediate effect.

Badenoch also removed the whip from Jenrick and suspended his party membership over suspicions that he was planning to leave the party.

‘I was presented with clear, irrefutable evidence that he was plotting in secret to defect in a way designed to be as damaging as possible to his Shadow Cabinet colleagues and the wider Conservative Party,’ said Badenoch.

‘The British public are tired of political psychodrama and so am I. They saw too much of it in the last government, they’re seeing too much of it in this government. I will not repeat those mistakes.’

Jenrick, a former solicitor, had been the shadow justice secretary for around 15 months, having been appointed by the woman who defeated him in the Conservative leadership election.

He was an outspoken critic of the judicial review process, which he said was ‘mummifying economic growth’ and pledged that his party would leave the European Convention on Human Rights. He also led an attack on the independence of some judges who he said ‘blur the line between adjudication and activism’.

Jenrick appears likely to be defecting to the Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage. His replacement as shadow justice secretary has yet to be announced.