Nadine Dorries has defected to Reform on the eve of its conference, saying the Conservative party “is dead”.
The former Tory cabinet minister, a close ally of Boris Johnson when he was prime minister, served as culture secretary until 2022 before resigning a year later when blocked from getting a peerage.
On her defection, she told the Daily Mail: “The Tory party is dead. Its members now need to think the unthinkable and look to the future.”
After months of secret talks conducted at a Mayfair club, Dorries said the Conservatives had left her and that her values were now more aligned with Reform.
She is the third former cabinet minister to join Reform in recent months, after the former party chair Jake Berry and the ex-Welsh secretary David Jones. Other former Conservative MPs to jump ship include Andrea Jenkyns, now Reform mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, Marco Longhi and Adam Holloway. The former Tory vice-chair Lee Anderson defected to Reform in the last parliament and was elected as an MP.
With Reform enjoying a double digit poll lead, the number of former and current Tory MPs seeking to defect is only likely to ramp up as it gets closer to an election in order to increase their chances of staying in or returning to parliament.
Farage said on Thursday night: “I am absolutely delighted to welcome Nadine Dorries to Reform UK. She is a hugely successful politician, author and columnist and will be a great boost to our campaign to win the next general election.”
A Labour party spokesperson said Dorries was one of the people “who helped to kill” the Tory party, adding: “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.
“Nadine Dorries has gone on quite a political journey – from being the minister who introduced the online safety bill to joining a party that wants to scrap it without having any idea how to replace its protections for children and adults. It’s a perfect illustration of how incoherent Reform are.”
Dorries has been highly critical of the Conservatives over their treatment of her, writing about what she saw as a conspiracy by a faction including Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings to control the party in her memoir The Plot.
The high-profile defection is a boost for Reform ahead of its conference in Birmingham where Farage will on Friday give a speech at 4pm on the party’s next steps after leading in the polls for six months.
Since last year’s event, it has expanded from 80,000 to nearly 240,000 members, rising from 19% to 30% in the polls, and securing 900 councillors across 12 local authorities. There is also considerable interest in the conference from businesses who for the first time are taking seriously the possibility that Farage’s party could enter government.
New figures from the Electoral Commission showed on Thursday that Reform UK attracted almost £1m from former Tory donors in the second quarter of the year, including a long-promised £500,000 from property billionaire Nick Candy.
Candy handed over the sum across the spring and summer, after joining Reform in December as a treasurer and saying he would hand over a seven-figure amount to the party.
Reform’s other gifts from former Conservative donors included £200,000 from Bassim Haidar, a billionaire IT investor, and £100,000 from Johan Christofferson, a hedge fund manager and foxhunting enthusiast who previously gave money to Boris Johnson.
R20, an investment vehicle linked to property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz, is a further former Tory donor that has given to Reform for the first time, with a £50,000 contribution.
Farage’s party also accepted £100,000 from Greybull Capital which bought a struggling British Steel in 2019 before selling it to the Chinese company Jingye later that year.
Despite the flow of donors to Reform, the Conservatives still raised significantly more money than both Reform and Labour in terms of funds from private donors.
The Tory chair Kevin Hollinrake said the figures “underline the continued strength of support behind the Conservative party”, adding: “We are building momentum quarter after quarter, and it is clear that people recognise and believe in Kemi’s mission of Conservative renewal.”
