❓WHAT HAPPENED: Former Conservative minister Nadine Dorries has announced her defection to Reform UK.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Nadine Dorries, former MP for Mid-Bedfordshire and ex-culture secretary, along with other defectors like David Jones and Sir Jake Berry.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The announcement was made in an interview with the Daily Mail.
💬KEY QUOTE: “The Tory Party is dead. Its members now need to think the unthinkable and look to the future.” – Nadine Dorries
🎯IMPACT: This marks another high-profile defection to Reform UK, signaling potential shifts in the British political landscape.
Nadine Dorries, a former Conservative (Tory) Party member of the Cabinet and close ally of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has officially defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. “The Tory Party is dead,” she told the British press, adding: “Its members now need to think the unthinkable and look to the future.”
Dorries previously served as Culture Secretary and as a health minister during Boris Johnson’s administration. She also represented the Mid-Bedfordshire constituency in the House of Commons before stepping down as a Member of Parliament (MP) months after Johnson’s ouster.
Her departure is part of a growing trend of Conservative politicians defecting to Reform. Other notable figures include former Welsh Secretary David Jones and ex-Tory Party Chairman Sir Jake Berry.
The notionally right-wing party governed from 2010 to mid-2024, winning its biggest parliamentary majority since Margaret Thatcher in the 2019 general election. However, after botching Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasing immigration to record-breaking levels despite repeated promises to reduce it substantially, support for the Tories collapsed, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party winning a large majority in 2024 despite earning fewer votes than it did in 2019.
In conversation with Farage in 2023, while the Conservatives were still in office, U.S. President Donald J. Trump noted that the party “really weren’t staying conservative… they were literally going far left,” adding: “It never made sense.”
Farage’s party is now consistently outpolling Labour, with the Conservatives falling into a distant third or even fourth place.
📊 Ref lead of 8pts
Westminster voting intentionREF: 28% (-)
LAB: 20% (-1)
CON: 17% (-1)
LDEM: 16% (+1)
GRN: 11% (+1)via @YouGov, 25 – 26 Aug
Chgs. w/ 18 Aughttps://t.co/QzghnN5ONi— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) August 27, 2025
This story is developing…
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