Suella Braverman defects to Reform

Former home secretary is latest Tory MP to join Nigel Farage’s party, just days after Robert Jenrick Daily Telegraph 26/01/26 Suella Braverman has become the latest senior Conservative to defect to Reform UK.

The former home secretary’s decision to leave the Tories two weeks after Robert Jenrick and Nadhim Zahawi will pile further pressure on Kemi Badenoch. Mrs Braverman became the 27th current or former Conservative MP to defect to Nigel Farage’s party and brought the number of Reform seats in the Commons to eight. The latest defection will likely be touted as a major coup by Reform after Mr Farage said he was looking to gain more ministerial and policy expertise in the party. Unveiling his newest MP at a press conference on Monday, he said it was “about time” Mrs Braverman defected, describing her as “somebody who’s reached high office in the Cabinet”. In a scathing attack on her former colleagues, Mrs Braverman said: “I’m calling time on Tory betrayal. I’m calling time on Tory lies. I’m calling time on a party that keeps making promises with zero intention of keeping them. “Britain is indeed broken. She is suffering. She is not well, immigration is out of control, our public services are on their knees, people don’t feel safe, our youngsters are leaving the country for better futures elsewhere,” she added. “We can’t even defend ourselves, and our nation stands weak and humiliated on the world stage. So we stand at a crossroads. We can either continue down this route of managed decline to weakness and surrender or we can fix our country, reclaim our power, rediscover our strength.” Mrs Braverman, who resigned her Conservative Party membership after 30 years, said she would be sitting as a Reform MP with immediate effect, suggesting she would not trigger a by-election to seek a fresh mandate from her constituents. Mr Jenrick welcomed her to the party on social media shortly after the announcement, saying: “Great to be on the same team again. Let’s take our country back.” “I haven’t taken this decision lightly, and I know there’ll be some people, particularly in Fareham and Waterlooville Conservatives, who will feel sad and disappointed by this. I will explain my reasons in full later on today,” she said. Mrs Braverman praised her new party leader, claiming there was “only one man in British politics who has been courageously consistent for his country, and that man is Nigel Farage”. She hailed him for “speaking the truth” and “saying what we’ve all needed to hear” while “the establishment has tried to shut him down”. “He’s not backed down in the face of vicious onslaught, vicious vitriol and backlash. When Nigel Farage said that the country was at breaking point because immigration was out of control, the establishment tried to smear him and demonise him, but he was proven right, and the British people backed him,” Mrs Braverman added. In contrast, she said she had pleaded with Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister, to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) but she was blocked and then sacked. She said: “What did the Conservative Party say? My Conservative ministerial colleagues, they said, no, we can’t do that. It’s too divisive, it’s too difficult, too dangerous, not the right time. “You see, even those who are leading the Conservative Party today failed to understand what needed to be done, and they opposed me. You see, when it mattered, when we had the majority, when we had the power, indeed when we had the duty, the Conservative Party utterly failed to do the right thing for the British people.” Mrs Braverman has been the MP for Fareham and Waterlooville since 2015 and served as home secretary under Liz Truss and Mr Sunak. She was fired by Ms Truss for sharing an official document from her personal email address with another MP, an action which breached ministerial code. After backing Mr Sunak’s leadership campaign, she was restored to her previous role but went on to defy him by writing an article accusing the Metropolitan Police of bias over the policing of protests in London. She accused the force of a policing “double standard” by taking a tougher stance on Right-wing demonstrations than pro-Palestine marches, despite Downing Street requesting that she tone down her language in the article. Her defection followed Mr Jenrick’s exit, who left the Tories after being sacked from his post as justice secretary by Mrs Badenoch, the Tory leader. After learning that Mr Jenrick was planning to defect, she removed him from the party hours before he was unveiled as the latest Reform MP. Mrs Badenoch insisted she was “cleaning out the rubbish” from her parliamentary ranks, accusing her former minister of disloyalty and calling him a habitual liar. Days later, he was followed by Andrew Rosindell, the shadow foreign office minister, who said he crossed the floor in protest at the Tories’ handling of the Chagos Islands deal. Mr Farage gave would-be defectors a hard deadline of May 7, the day of the forthcoming local elections. But certain Reform figures have appeared wary of accepting too many former Conservatives in their ranks. Following Mr Jenrick’s defection, Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy, promised that “Reform grassroots” would be prioritised over “failed former Tory MPs” in the candidate selection process.