Suella Braverman defects to Reform

Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, has defected from the Conservatives to Reform UK.

Mrs Braverman becomes the latest major name on the Conservative Right to join Mr Farage’s party, less than a fortnight after Robert Jenrick, the former shadow justice secretary, made the move.

The total number of Reform MPs is now up to eight, including four who have defected from the Tories since the general election.

Announcing her defection at a Reform press conference, Mrs Braverman said: “I feel like I’ve come home.”

She added: “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.

“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.”

Mr Farage said it was “about time” Mrs Braverman defected, describing her as “somebody who’s reached high office in the Cabinet, reaching up to the rank of home secretary”.

Mrs Braverman said she would be sitting as a Reform MP with immediate effect, suggesting she would not be triggering a by-election to seek a fresh mandate from her constituents.

She added: “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.”

Mrs Braverman 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.

Taking aim at her former party in a similar way to Mr Jenrick, she added: “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.”

‘Vicious vitriol’

Mrs Braverman said there was “only one man in British politics who has been courageously consistent for his country, and that man is Nigel Farage”.

She praised the Reform leader for “speaking the truth” and “saying what we’ve all needed to hear” while “the establishment has tried to shut him down”.

She added: “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.”

In an attack on her former party, 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.”

Mrs Braverman has been the MP for Fareham and Waterlooville since 2015, and served as home secretary under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

She was sacked by Mr Sunak after she defied No 10 by writing an article accusing the Metropolitan Police of bias over the policing of protests in London.

Downing Street had requested that she tone down her language in the article, but she refused.

Earlier this month, Kemi Badenoch sacked Mr Jenrick and removed him from the party hours before he was unveiled by Mr Farage after she learned he had planned to defect.

Mrs Badenoch insisted she was “cleaning out the rubbish” from her parliamentary ranks after accusing her former shadow justice secretary of disloyalty and calling him a habitual liar.

Just days later, he was followed by Andrew Rosindell, a shadow foreign office minister, who said he crossed the floor in protest at the Tories’ handling of the Chagos Islands deal.

Mr Farage declared that any further defectors had a deadline of May 7, the day of the local elections.

The latest defection is likely to be touted as a major coup by Reform, with Mr Farage having said he was looking to add more ministerial and policy expertise to the party ranks.

But some Reform figures have appeared wary of accepting too many former Conservatives into the party.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]