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Former Conservative minister Nadine Dorris has declared “the Tory party is dead” as she announced she was defecting to join forces with Reform leader Nigel Farage.
The former Culture Secretary, who was MP for Mid-Bedfordshire from 2005 to 2023, revealed her decision in her column for the Daily Mail.
“The time for action is now and I believe that the only politician who has the answers, the knowledge and the will to deliver is Nigel Farage. Nigel and I will never agree about everything. Neither of us are political robots,” she wrote.
“But on the issues of law and order, immigration, the need to drastically cut public spending and boost growth and to support Ukraine, I am 100 per cent behind Nigel. When we disagree, it will be in private,” she added.
Ms Dorries, announcing her decision, also said that “it’s time for change” and to “time make Britain great again”, declaring the Tory Party “dead”.
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She wrote: “My decision to leave the party I’ve served for more than 30 years is possibly the most difficult I’ve ever had to make, and it has taken me 12 agonising months to reach.”
Ms Dories said she realised her political principles have never changed and that she held the same “core beliefs” as the day she joined the Conservatives back in 1995. Instead, she said the problems is the Conservative Party has changed.
She is the latest in a string of defections from the Conservatives to Reform UK, including former Welsh Secretary David Jones and ex-Tory Chairman Sir Jake Berry.
The move comes ahead of the start of Reform’s annual conference in Birmingham tomorrow, where she will deliver the opening speech.
Friends of Ms Dorries told the Daily Mail she made the move now because she thinks the Labour Government could fall within two years and that Kemi Badenoch would not be in a position to win a General Election.
Responding to the news that Nadine Dorries has defected to Reform UK, a Liberal Democrat source said: “We don’t know who to feel more sorry for, Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage.”
In a post on X, newly-elected Green Party leader Zack Polanski said: “Nadine Dorries joining Reform isn’t a shock. It’s logical for a politics of cruelty, corruption, and the collapse of neoliberalism.
“The rise of Reform is the fault of a failing Labour Government & their vapid politics. We’re growing the alternative.”
