FORMER home secretary Suella Braverman has joined Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, becoming the latest senior Conservative to defect. She accused her former party of misleading voters on immigration.
Opinion polls currently place Reform UK ahead of both the Labour Party and the Conservatives, although the next general election is not due until 2029.
Reform UK remains a small group in the House of Commons, but Braverman’s move takes its number of MPs to eight. That compares with more than 400 Labour MPs in the 650-seat chamber.
Braverman follows former Conservative minister Robert Jenrick, who announced earlier this month that he was joining Reform UK.
“Britain is indeed broken,” a visibly emotional Braverman said at a Reform UK rally, where she appeared alongside Farage.
“We can either continue down this route of managed decline to weakness and surrender, or we can fix our country,” she said, accusing the Conservatives of lying about their promise to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
Reform UK, and now the Conservatives, say leaving the ECHR would give Britain greater control over immigration by limiting the grounds on which people facing deportation can appeal.
The Labour government has said it wants to remain in the ECHR but reform how it is applied in some asylum cases.
Responding to Braverman’s defection, a Conservative Party spokesperson said she was more focused on personal ambition than on improving the country.
“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’,” the spokesperson said.
Braverman, 45, is a former lawyer who served as home secretary in Rishi Sunak’s government from 2022 to 2023. She was dismissed after criticising police handling of protests.
She had previously resigned from the same role in Liz Truss’s government after sending official documents from a personal email account.
