There are a number of interesting new stats that now apply to Reform UK.
Following Suella Braverman’s defection, the party has eight MPs – half of them are Tories who left for the turquoise blue in this Parliament alone. They have more of Liz Truss’s cabinet in their team than Kemi Badenoch has in her shadow cabinet.
Of Boris Johnson’s ministerial team Reform can now claim they have his former chancellor, communities secretary, culture secretary, attorney general, political secretary, skills minister, Northern Powerhouse minister, health minister, parliamentary private secretary, assistant whip and a Scotland Office minister.
Braverman’s defection to many Tories came as little surprise. One MP tells me: “I haven’t seen her all year.” Another, one of the 2024 intake, adds: “I honestly think I have only met her once, that is how little she is around.” But yet she had just placed as Conservative backbencher of the year by our ConservativeHome panel.
It marks quite the end to a political friendship for the former Home Secretary and Kemi Badenoch, who once organised Braverman’s hen do. The deterioration began some time ago with leaked comments of Badenoch’s from the first meeting of the shadow cabinet, accusing her of having a “very public” nervous breakdown.
In her move to Reform, the long-time Tory politician remarked she felt “like I’ve come home”. Braverman may well feel like it given how many former colleagues she has now joined. But it remains an interesting decision given her Fareham and Waterlooville seat is not sewn up with a Reform UK defection – predictions on Electoral Calculus have it remaining Tory.
There is yet more awkwardness for Reform to manage, given their leader Nigel Farage having pledged in the Daily Mail that Reform wouldn’t take Braverman over concerns for the party’s image and Zia Yusuf the party’s policy chief writing on X of a government cover up with Braverman at the helm as Home Secretary. Quite the choice to then hire both of those named.
It does bring on the inevitable question of whether Reform is Tories 2.0, but the recycled, rejected version – and to this Farage has said: “We are taking people who tried their best to fight the system at the time and they admit they failed.” Adding that he won’t be accepting the likes of Boris Johnson or Priti Patel.
The Tories were initially punchy with their statement, telling journalists that Braverman was “clearly very unhappy” and left following “mental health issues”, only to later say that the released comment was meant to be a draft – reissuing the statement without the targeted mental health comment barb that sparked much ire. I received messages from a Reform source saying “they will have to retract it” and “apologise”.
But LOTO were especially pleased with a different section of their statement: “As always happens with Reform, they unveil defections just when the Labour government is tearing itself to pieces – Rayner, Mandelson, now Burnham. Reform are too busy opposing the Conservatives to hold the Labour government to account.”
They see their mission as continuing to do the job of opposition, “proper political accountability” – and the belief within LOTO and the whips is that they have stemmed the flow of defections. The usual figures mentioned of Jack Rankin and Katie Lam have made their denials, others in the new intake where nerves remained like Peter Bedford and Lewis Cocking seem to have been reassured after efforts were made, while Esther McVey is, I’m told, “rock solid”.
One of the remaining question marks is over Sir John Hayes who last week said to me “my life long battle for authentic, unabridged conservatism continues”. He was a member of the New Conservatives group, alongside former colleagues Braverman and Danny Kruger. Both he and another defector Andrew Rosindell were meant to be hosting a Conservative Friends of Armenia event later today.
Halting the leak is one thing but doing something to set a distinct Conservative narrative other than “the official opposition” or “proper political accountability” is another thing, especially when other groups are trying to do that for you.
Like the freshly launched Prosper UK, led by former Birmingham Mayor Andy Street and former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson – set up with the help of former No10 chief of staff Gavin Barwell – who said yesterday: “The Conservative party is failing on the business and growth side and we want to help Kemi to become the new prime minister.”
There are no sitting MPs involved; all the exes, the formers. The roll call reveals quite the list. It is viewed by those within Badenoch’s LOTO as “deeply unhelpful” to the work she is trying to do with the party, giving it some ideological identification while “groups like this” try to suggest “the ‘Tory wets’ have got their party back”. They added: “It just isn’t the case.”
The real work that is going on behind the scenes, and which needs quick development, surrounds the question: what is the Tories’ narrative to be the party of the right? And it is one that dominated part of last week’s shadow cabinet and people’s minds since. But the answer, at least a clear one, hasn’t really emerged yet. There is, however, a start through policy.
Braverman, in her 20-minute defection speech – during which she declared “time on Tory lies” – ridiculed the party’s pledge to quit the European Convention on Human Rights, saying “half of [its] MPs’ do not want to leave”. That might be her perspective, though I don’t know who she has been talking to. The thing is that Badenoch has actually made it a red line and said any future Tory parliamentary candidates must be signed up to the policy. It is happening.
You think the party hasn’t changed under Kemi Badenoch, look at the people who have left the Conservatives for Reform of late: Braverman, Jenrick, Zahawi. And still the party that is left, led by Kemi Badenoch, is one of the right.
It still needs to figure out how to communicate it.