Former home secretary Suella Braverman has denied claims that she is set to defect to Reform as she prepares to share a platform with the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice.
The former home secretary will be at the Prosperity Institute, formerly known as the Legatum Institute, to deliver a paper on “why and how to leave the European Convention on Human Rights”.
She will also be joined by Tory peer David Frost, who negotiated the much-criticised Brexit deal. But neither of them is planning to join Reform.
Mr Tice triggered speculation on Wednesday when he posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he’d be sharing a press conference with the former Tory cabinet ministers.
But long term friend of Ms Braverman and fellow Tory MP Sir John Hayes told The Independent: “Suella is 100 per cent not defecting. This is all about leaving the ECHR, and I think that both our party and Reform will end up adopting Suella’s paper.”
A spokesperson for Ms Braverman said: “She is not defecting.”
Tomorrow at 10am I will be sharing a press conference with @DavidGHFrost and @SuellaBraverman
— Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 (@TiceRichard) September 10, 2025
Dont miss it!
Will be live streamed 🇬🇧
Former home secretary Ms Braverman has long campaigned for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights in a bid to stop small boat crossings.
Ms Braverman said her paper was “the first detailed plan that busts myths and sets out clear proposals on Northern Ireland, the Human Rights Act, the EU, and how our civil liberties will be protected after we leave”.
It comes hours after Richard Hermer, a Labour peer and the government’s attorney general, trashed the arguments for leaving the Convention, warning at a Lords committee hearing that doing so would put the UK in the same category as Russia and Belarus.
Reform has already pledged to leave the Convention entirely, along with other international conventions it regards as obstacles to “mass deportations”, while the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has asked her shadow attorney general to examine the practicalities of leaving.
Ms Braverman did not deny that she could use the event to announce a shift in her party allegiance.
A defection to Nigel Farage’s party by Ms Braverman, who is the MP for Fareham and Waterlooville, would, according to her allies, be more difficult now because of the way that she was personally attacked by Reform’s former chair Zia Yusuf. The social media onslaught led to her husband Rael quitting Reform in protest.
Lord Frost, the former chief Brexit negotiator, has not ruled out running for Reform UK in a future general election.
The Tory peer said in May that he was “not emotionally committed” to the Tories, who “still haven’t really clocked what the problem is” following their election wipeout last year.
It comes after former culture secretary Nadine Dorries became the latest former cabinet minister to join Reform in recent months, on the eve of its party conference.
Others who have jumped ship recently include former Tory party chair Sir Jake Berry, former Wales secretary David Jones, and Dame Andrea Jenkyns.
