DAN HODGES: Left? Hard right? Does even Robert Jenrick himself know which way he will go?

Then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman galloped through some crowd-pleasing lines as she delivered a typically boisterous speech at last year’s Tory Party conference, lambasting Albanian migrants, environmental anarchists and Islamist fundamentalists.

Then she paused and thought for a moment. ‘Labor is the party of pressure groups, wealthy fanatics and trade union activists. But you know, the Conservative Party is also a kind of trade union. Because we are the union of the British people,” she said.

A few weeks ago Robert Jenrick appeared on the BBC to make his pitch for the Tory leadership. He was asked who posed the biggest threat to the Tories. Nigel Farage or Sir Ed Davey?

“I don’t think you should pick a lane,” Jenrick replied. ‘I want to bring back the millions of people we have lost to the reforms, by leaving the ECtHR (European Court of Human Rights), by putting an end to the era of mass migration, and I want the people we have lost to the Libyan Libya. Dems. I want the Conservative Party to be the union for the working people of this country.”

Today, the final ballots are landing on the doormats of Conservative Party members. They face two choices: Kemi Badenoch, the fiery, formidable – if somewhat erratic – former president of the Board of Trade. And…well, honestly, no one is quite sure. The second name on the ballot paper is someone called Robert Jenrick. I assume it’s the same person who appeared on the BBC and said Suella Braverman’s words. Although apparently those are not the words of the former Minister of the Interior.

“That line was given to her by John Hayes,” a shadow minister told me, “and he is now working closely with Jenrick.”

I know a little about Hayes. He was born near me in South East London and grew up on a council estate. He has been MP for South Holland and the Deepings in Lincolnshire since 1997 and Braverman’s mentor. Or, as another shadow minister told me: ‘Suella’s political caretaker’.

And he now sends his powerfully right-wing messages through Robert Jenrick.

But which Jenrick? Most people in Westminster view the Tory leadership candidate as a solid but unremarkable mid-level minister with an interest in housing. Last year he emerged in the Ministry of the Interior. According to someone who claims to know him a little, Jenrick was not particularly fond of this appointment.

“When he was told he was going to be Immigration Minister, he cried,” they told me.

But when he did, it was a different Jenrick who turned up at his new department in Marsham Street. This Robert Jenrick was energetic and enthusiastic. So much so that, when interviewed on Good Morning Britain in May, he claimed to have overseen “the largest net immigration reduction of all time”. He boasted: ‘I have convinced the Prime Minister to take measures that will reduce the number of people entering this country by 300,000.’

Although that claim was disputed a few weeks later. By someone else called Robert Jenrick. “We have delivered nothing,” he chided when the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asked why the Tories had lost the election “especially on secure borders and controlled and reduced migration.”

In my attempt to track down the real Robert Jenrick – or at least someone who matched his description – I spoke to a former senior adviser in Downing Street in Rishi Sunak. Did they remember the Robert Jenrick who successfully persuaded Sunak to cut immigration in record numbers?

Or was the Robert Jenrick they knew the man who resigned from government and angrily declared: ‘I refuse to be another politician who makes promises to the British people on immigration but fails to deliver’?

In the end it turned out to be someone completely different. “Rishi and Rob were close,” they told me. ‘They were two of the Three Musketeers, along with Oliver Dowden. They were the young, dynamic future of the party. But Rob was the most liberal of the three. That’s why he was placed in the Ministry of the Interior, to balance Suella out.’

Liberal Jenrick is definitely a real person, as there have been other confirmed sightings.

During the Brexit referendum he campaigned for Remain and signed a letter saying voting Leave would ‘lead us into a dystopia’. So how and when was this Robert Jenrick replaced by the doppelgänger who darkly warned the Prime Minister a few weeks ago not to ‘lose the Brexit benefits’?

Robert Jenrick during last week’s GMB News hustings

Some Tory insiders claim this followed his decision to bring in a group of hard-hitting and ruthlessly effective former Suella Braverman advisers to manage his campaign.

One journalist interviewing Jenrick found himself looking hurriedly to his assistants for approval after each answer.

“He doesn’t do anything they haven’t thought out in advance,” one MP told me.

Others point to the influence of his successful wife Michal Berkner, a corporate lawyer.

“She is his real campaign manager,” a shadow minister told me. ‘He follows her advice in everything. Someone who was with them recently said she ordered for him. He adores her.’

The perception among some Conservative MPs is that Jenrick is emulating Sir Keir Starmer’s strategy. He will run to the right to secure the Tory crown, then turn back and rediscover his liberal instincts. “I said to Robert to his face, ‘You’ve surrounded yourself with bad people,’” one MP said. His response was, ‘They’re not important. If I win, they have no control over me.’

So who will do it? All politicians go on a trip. But it is very difficult to see exactly where Robert

Jenrick started and where it should end.

Last Thursday I watched the GB News broadcasts. Someone would appear claiming to be him.

But he didn’t show up. A man called Robert Jenrick was Immigration Secretary for fourteen months. But this Robert Jenrick seemed to have opposed most of the previous government’s immigration policies.

A certain Robert Jenrick was Housing Secretary for more than two years. But this Jenrick believed that the government had failed to build enough houses. Records show that Robert Jenrick was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Theresa May in 2018. But this impersonator repeatedly castigated the government for failing to pursue a sufficiently robust economic agenda.

In a fortnight the Conservative Party will elect a new leader. It’s still not clear to me who the real Robert Jenrick is. And more importantly, I’m not sure Robert Jenrick knows exactly who Robert Jenrick is.