Nadine Dorries has become the latest high-profile Conservative to defect to Reform UK, declaring: “The Tory Party is dead.”
The former culture secretary and health minister broke the news on Thursday via the Daily Mail in a boost for Nigel Farage on the eve of his party’s national conference in Birmingham.
She is the latest in a string of defections from the Conservatives to Reform, including former chairman Sir Jake Berry.
The move heaps further pressure on Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, at a time when her party continues to trail Reform in the polls.
Ms Dorries told the Mail: “The Tory Party is dead. Its members now need to think the unthinkable and look to the future.”
She added: “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.”
Ms Dorries also posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: "The Conservative Party cannot win the next election. It removes election winning prime ministers, and replaces them with duds.”
Welcoming Ms Dorries to Reform, Mr Farage said: “She is a hugely successful politician, author and columnist and will be a great boost to our campaign to win the next General Election.”
However, it is understood that Mr Farage has not guaranteed the former Mid-Bedfordshire MP a job in a future Reform government.
Ms Dorries, a former nurse and bestselling author, stepped down from the Commons in 2023 after 18 years as an MP, where she was known as a loyal supporter of former prime minister Boris Johnson.
She had 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 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".
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.
Rival parties reacted to Ms Dorries defection.
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."
Other defectors to Reform UK from the Conservatives have included former Wales secretary David Jones and Dame Andrea Jenkyns.
While Laila Cunningham, who had been elected as a Tory councillor in the party’s flagship local authority Westminster City Council, defected to Mr Farage’s party after saying she was “tired of defending failure”.
