Ex-Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman defects to Reform UK

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has become the latest Conservative MP to defect to Reform UK.

She becomes the third sitting Tory MP to join Nigel Farage's party in the last eleven days, and takes Reform's tally of MPs to eight.

Unveiled at a rally in London, Braverman told Reform supporters she had also resigned her Tory membership of 30 years, adding: "I feel like I've come home."

Her defection comes hot on the heels of Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell, who also left the Conservatives earlier this month.

A major figure on the right of the party under the last government, Braverman has long been seen as a potential Reform defector at Westminster.

But her unveiling as Reform's latest recruit came as a surprise announcement by Farage during an event to launch a party group for military veterans in London.

An MP since 2015, Braverman was attorney general under Boris Johnson and became home secretary under Liz Truss in September 2022.

She was forced to step down from the role a month later, after it emerged she had sent an official document to a Tory colleague using her personal email.

Rishi Sunak re-appointed her to the position just six days later upon entering Downing Street, but sacked her the following year, over an article accusing the Metropolitan Police of bias in the policing of pro-Palestinian protests in London.

Speaking at the Reform rally, Braverman told supporters that Britain was "broken" and immigration was "out of control".

"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," she told the crowd.

Farage said he had been talking to Braverman for "just over a year" about the possibility of defecting and that she had "reached the view that actually the centre-right of British politics needs to unify around Reform".

He said her record as home secretary had been "utterly useless".

"They all were utterly useless because they were stuck within the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights]," he told reporters.

"The government was a failure but she's now prepared to put her hands up and say, 'we got it wrong'."

The ECHR has been blamed by some politicians for making it harder to deport illegal migrants.

The Labour government is in negotiations over how the treaty is interpreted.

Braverman said the Conservatives' pledge to leave the convention altogether was "a lie".

The Conservative Party said it was "always a matter of when, not if, Suella would defect".

"There are some people who are MPs because they care about their communities and want to deliver a better country. There are others who do it for their personal ambition," a spokesman added.

"Suella stood for leader of the Conservatives in 2022 and came sixth, behind Kemi and Tom Tugendhat. In 2024 she could not even muster enough supporters to get on the ballot.

"She has now decided to try her luck with Nigel Farage, who said last year he didn't want her in Reform."

In addition to the four sitting Conservative MPs that have now switched to Reform, around 20 former Tory MPs have made the move since the general election, including former ministers Nadhim Zahawi, Nadine Dorries and Jake Berry.

Henry Smith - one of those ex-MPs to make the switch - said Braverman had tried to "steer the last government in a Conservative direction" but had been "very much stopped in her tracks".

Speaking to Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live, the former Crawley MP said that while the Conservative leadership "might be making noises to the right," many Conservative MPs were "quite frankly more comfortable in a much more Liberal Democrat position".

Appearing on the same programme, Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said: "People like Suella and Rob Jenrick are leaving the Conservative Party just at the time when Kemi is sorting all these things out, and she's beginning to pull us up in the polls.

"Maybe it's because she's doing better that they're leaving."

Labour Party chair Anna Turley said: "Nigel Farage is stuffing his party full of the failed Tories responsible for the chaos and decline that held Britain back for 14 years."

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said "Farage has recruited yet another Conservative minister with selective amnesia - one who complains about broken Britain while conveniently forgetting they helped break it."