Former Conservative culture secretary Nadine Dorries has announced that she has defected to Reform UK.
She wrote in 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.”
Ms Dorries, announcing her decision, also said that “it’s time for change” and to “make Britain great again”, declaring the Tory Party “dead”.
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.”
It comes a day before the Reform UK party conference begins.
Ms Dorries, 68, is the highest profile Tory to join Reform after defections from former party chairman Sir Jake Berry, former Wales secretary David Jones and Dame Andrea Jenkyns.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Nadine Dorries says the Tory party is dead – as one of the people who helped to kill it, she should know.
“She backed Boris Johnson through thick and thin despite the partying in Downing Street during the pandemic while people couldn’t see their loved ones. And now she wants to help unleash the same chaos the Tories inflicted on Britain by joining Nigel Farage’s Reform.”
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.”
Ms Dorries wrote that her “core beliefs” were the same as when she first joined the Conservatives in 1995, adding that the party “had changed not me”.
She stepped down as an MP in 2023 after 18 years in the House of Commons, and accused former leader Rishi Sunak of “demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy” against her.
She also accused Mr Sunak of abandoning “the fundamental principles of Conservatism” and said “history will not judge you kindly”.
Ms Dorries, who was born in 1957 in Liverpool and grew up on a council estate, wrote in the Daily Mail: “I have known Nigel Farage for some considerable time, and no-one can deny that he believes in what he says because he’s been saying the same thing for more than 30 years.”
The Conservative Party is dead.
— Rt Hon Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) September 4, 2025
She started her working life as a nurse before pursuing a career in business, opening a child daycare business before becoming a director at Bupa.
Before her election to Parliament as MP for Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, she worked for three years as an adviser to the former shadow home secretary and shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin.
Ms Dorries was thrust into the limelight in 2012 when she was suspended from the Conservative Party for appearing on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! without informing the chief whip first.
However, she was readmitted to the party in May 2013.
Her first ministerial appointment was as minister of state for patient safety, suicide prevention and mental health, during which she garnered criticism for rejecting cross-party talks to discuss a package of mental health support for frontline workers during the pandemic.
A staunch loyalist to then-prime minister Boris Johnson, Ms Dorries was promoted to secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport in September 2021.
In her time in the role she was a frequent advocate for BBC reform, and led the now-ditched plan to privatise Channel 4.
Despite backing Liz Truss in the race for leadership following Mr Johnson’s resignation, Ms Dorries decided not to continue as culture secretary when Ms Truss took over as prime minister.
Ms Dorries was embroiled in a string of controversies throughout her tenure as an MP.
In 2009, when MPs’ expenses claims were revealed by the Daily Telegraph, she admitted she had got taxpayers to foot the bill for a lost £2,190 deposit on a rented flat.
And in 2010, she was rebuked by parliamentary standards commissioner John Lyon for misleading her constituents on her blog about how much time she spent in mid-Bedfordshire, admitting that it was “70% fiction”.
