And therefore, she arguably deserved to stay because at least he fought her corner, unlike Azhar who just said strategy and "Jade's out of her depth" over and over. It was surprising to me, as he had defended himself well the previous week.

She must have had an idea of how bad Laura was,she should have brought Laura in,why didn't she

Possibly because Laura did well on the task? We don't really know, tbh. However, it was evident that she was definitely going to bring Azhar in and she wasn't going to bring Adam in, as they got on well this week and I think it was a toss up between the other two.

So nothing to do with girls sticking together then no matter what

Doubt it. Haven't seen her display anything like that in the past. She's only worked with Laura on three tasks prior to last week.

When Tom was asked who should be in the boardroom instead of him, he indicated Adam, not Laura. I don't think it was clear-cut (apart from the fact that Tom shouldn't have been there, unless they were hiding a major piece of information from us in the edit). Adam backed up a lot of Jade's decisions, and should have known better based on the fact that the task was closer to his day job than anybody else's.

I have to say, I was surprised at how their relationship had seemed to turn so quickly in one task. It seemed to continue when Jade got back to the house and Adam's all "You fought your corner - good for you".

I don't think Jade is stupid. (Impulsive - yes, thoughtless - maybe but not stupid.)

She realised pretty much straight away that she'd be carrying the can for the most part for the team's failure. After that her choices were limited. She knew that nobody (Azhar apart) had anything tangible that she could throw at them that would deflect from her own performance. Bringing Adam back would have been daft as he clearly performed well and had the backing of Karren. Therefore, her choice was Tom v Laura. I'd guess she brought Tom back because Laura would have had no hesitation in highlighting every shortcoming (and let's face it there were many) of Jade during the task whereas Tom, although he might mention her lack of control (which he did) wouldn't be quite so vociferous.

What was everyone expecting Jade to do here? Roll over and die? Commit hara kiri in the boardroom by falling on her own sword? She knows she's primarily responsible for the loss but she also wants desperately to stay in the process. It's not going to be easy and she probably knew she'd have to sacrifice one or two principles to even stand a chance. And that's what she did. She brought Tom in knowing there was more likelihood of Lord Sugar firing Nick or Karren than his holiness and threw Azhar to the wolves. And if she wanted to stay I don't think she had any other choice. Now some people wouldn't be able to compromise themselves like that but I'd hazard they're people who would never apply for The Apprentice. We've seen worse than this.

As for Jade's behaviour afterwards - yes it was ungracious but I don't think her explanation is beyond believable. She knew she'd chucked Azhar under a bus to save herself and she knew she'd come within a whisker of being fired. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that she was a mass of conflicting emotions and just needed to get the hell out of there.

I agree completely. Nice to know I'm not totally on my own! Her performance in the task was very poor, but her performance in the boardroom wasn't and, for that, I felt that she deserved to stay.

I'm totally with you there.

I was watching some of Season 5 again today, and frankly, nothing we've seen so far this year remotely compares to what was said in the boardroom back then in terms of screaming and insults

I must admit I didn't expect I'd be defening Jade because I've been disappointed by her performance last week, both because I expected her to be a better PM - and she did miss the boat on this one (although to be fair, again, there has been far worse PMing in the past) - and because she should have, in my opinion, been fired based on this task and I'm not a big fan of those boardroom tactics. But as you said, she did what she had to survive and she didn't attack Azhar as a person - she kept it about business (yes, she said Azhar didn't have people skills, but again, it was my understanding that she was relating it to the business environment), which is a lot more than can be said about boardroom feuds in previous seasons. And as far as survival tactics go, I was more shocked by Stephen's in the street food task than by Jane's here