Conservative MP Suella Braverman is expected to quit the the party and join Nigel Farage’s Reform UK later this year, according to sources in both parties.
The right-wing former home secretary is struggling to command enough support to run for the Tory leadership when the race officially kicks off next week, after key allies abandoned her fledgling campaign.
She may even face the ignominy of failing to secure the numbers to get on the ballot paper as support within the parliamentary party leeches away to other right-wing candidates.
“We expect her to take a tilt at the Tory leadership and then come over to us, perhaps in the autumn around conference time,” a Reform source said. “She’ll fit in well.”
A senior Tory source told i: “There’s now so much antagonism towards Suella Braverman among MPs that there is now a generally held view that she will defect.
“If she does, it will be a clear admission that she could not win the leadership and does not have the support of any MPs in the party.” Ms Braverman, MP for Fareham and Waterlooville, denied the claim. A spokesman said: “Suella has only recently been elected as a Conservative MP and has been a Conservative Party member for three decades.”
Previously she has argued the Conservatives “need to” find a way of working with Reform, saying she would “welcome” Farage into the party, a stance other Tories view with disdain.
Defecting to the party whose own canvassers openly drop the word ‘Paki’ when think no one is listening is certainly… a choice.
The odds of a face-eating leopard moment are pretty good all round.
Tory leadership race heats up in a similar way to last nights kebab.
With the same risk of limp lettuce.
I remember a time when British politics wasn’t quite so wild.
Obviously here defecting would be a big deal but it feels like this is originating from people who want to further alienate her from the Tories and possibly some variety of devilry.
Achieving the rare feat of increasing the average IQ of both groups.
Well that sounds like better news.
If insane bat shit tories like her feel the need to leave. Maybe tories are rejecting extremely right wing ideals as a solution.
So hopefully more sane central politics. And a split tory party for the next election. Witg reform yanking the real nutters from the party.
The problem is that Boris Johnson already made a fairly successful effort to purge the party of the non-nutters. And the party membership seems to be even more deranged than the post-purge and post-landslide-loss MPs. To ever get elected again, the Tories need to let members of the centre-right anti-Brexit faction back in, at a higher rate than the rabid right defects to Reform.
