Ex-Tory minister Nadine Dorries defects to Reform UK

Former Conservative minister Nadine Dorries has defected to Reform UK.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, the ex-MP for Mid-Bedfordshire said: "The Tory Party is dead. Its members now need to think the unthinkable and look to the future."

Dorries served as culture secretary and as a health minister under Boris Johnson, of whom she was a close ally.

She is the latest in a string of defections from the Conservatives to Reform UK, including former Welsh Secretary David Jones and ex-Tory Chairman Sir Jake Berry.

A Conservative Party spokesman said: "We wish Nadine well."

Dorries' defection on Thursday evening came on the eve of Reform's annual conference in Birmingham.

Reform UK's Zia Yusuf said Dorries would be an "asset" to the party.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast from Birmingham, he said: "Nadine has laid into the Tory record and has announced that in her view the Tory party is dead, and we agree with her."

Asked if Dorries would be in any future Reform UK cabinet Yusuf said that would be "a decision for Nigel and I think he's some way from making that decision".

Before joining Parliament in 2005, Dorries worked as a nurse and later became a bestselling author of a series of novels based on her upbringing in Liverpool.

She also appeared on the ITV reality TV show I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here - a decision that saw her briefly suspended as a Conservative MP.

Dorries stepped down as an MP in 2023, after 18 years in the House of Commons, with an attack on then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. She has since been critical of current Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Dorries said the decision to leave the Conservatives was "the most difficult decision I've ever had to make, and it has taken me 12 agonising months to reach".

She said 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 also criticised Conservative MPs for removing Boris Johnson as prime minister, calling her former colleagues "regicidal and self-serving".

Explaining her decision to join Reform, she pointed to a rise in some crimes such as shoplifting, as well as hotels being used to accommodate migrants.

"I believe you can feel a sense of dread taking hold of communities up and down the country," said Dorries.

"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."

She acknowledged that she and her new leader would not agree on everything but were united on "the issues of law and order, immigration, the need to drastically cut public spending and boost growth and to support Ukraine".

"When we disagree, it will be in private."

Yusuf said the defection of such a staunch Johnson ally proved "any notion that Boris Johnson would come back into British politics is also for the birds".

The former prime minister "did betray the country in a very serious way, he is in no small part the reason why the country has been overrun and our public services overrun in the way they have done", Yusuf added.

So far, Dorries has not spoken about the Online Safety Bill which she first introduced to Parliament and which Farage has strongly criticised.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: "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 - all anger, no answers, with contradictions building by the day."

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."