Suella Braverman Becomes Latest Right-Wing Tory MP To Defect To Reform

Former Tory home secretary Suella Braverman has defected to Reform UK.

The right-winger is the 27th former Conservative MP to switch to Nigel Farage’s party.

She told a press conference today: “I feel like I’ve come home.”

“Immigration is out of control. Our public services are on their knees. People don’t feel safe,” Braverman said. “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. I believe that a better Britain is possible.”

Braverman’s switch comes less than two weeks after former shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick also defected to Reform.

He was followed days later by another Tory right-winger, Andrew Rosindell.

Other former Conservatives to make the switch include Nadhim Zahawi, Jake Berry and Andrea Jenkyns.

Braverman’s own husband Rael also joined Reform a year ago, but quit last July.

That came a day after former-party chair Zia Yusuf and party leader Farage criticised Braverman – and Jenrick – for quietly allowing thousands of Afghans into the UK when they were in the home office together.

A Reform source told The Daily Mail last summer that Braverman would also not be welcome in their party as she was “not a team player”, and her “record shows she is just too disruptive”.

When she was in government, Eurosceptic Braverman was known for a series of highly controversial immigration policies, including championing the plan to deport “illegal” asylum seekers to Rwanda.

The Fareham and Waterlooville MP famously described homelessness as a “lifestyle choice” and described the left as the “tofu-eating wokerati”.

She consistently called for the Conservative party to go further right, and held ministerial roles under Theresa May,Boris Johnson,Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

She had to resign from Truss’s government after she was found to have broken the ministerial code by emailing a cabinet document via her personal email address but was brought back into the home office under Sunak.

Braverman continued to cause a stir from the backbenches too, claiming in February last year that she will “never be truly English” because her parents, both British citizens, are part of the Indian diaspora and born outside of the UK.

“How many generations must pass before one can claim to be English? Five? Six? It is a question without an easy answer,” she said at the time.

In January last year she also warned Britain could “fall into the hands of Muslim fundamentalism” and become like Iran, alleging the UK could become the “first Islamist nation with nuclear weapons”.

Braverman joined the exodus of right-wingers who headed to Trump’s swearing in last year, too, even wearing a Make America Great Again cap.

Like Jenrick, Braverman ran to be Tory leader in 2024 but lost to Kemi Badenoch.

A Tory spokesman said: “It was always a matter of when, not if, Suella would defect.

“The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella’s mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy. She says she feels that she has ‘come home’, which will come as a surprise to the people who chose not to elect a Reform MP in her constituency in 2024.

“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.

“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. They really are doing our ‘spring cleaning’.”