Reform is not rescue charity for panicky Tory MPs, Farage says

Nigel Farage has insisted Reform UK will not become Conservative Party 2.0 following the departure of former senior Tory Robert Jenrick.

Writing in TelegramThe party leader said Reform was “not a rescue charity for every panicked Tory MP” and that any potential defectors must be prepared to openly admit that the previous Conservative government “tore the country apart”.

Reform’s deputy chairman, Richard Tice, told the BBC that Jenrick was a “great new asset” who brought ministerial experience.

But with nearly 20 former Conservative MPs joining the party in recent months, critics have argued that Reform has become a home for the failed Conservative Party rather than a new force in British politics.

Farage said his party would no longer accept asylum seekers after the local elections on May 7.

He wrote in the Telegraph: “Any Conservative MP who still holds out hope that his party can recover and waits until May 8 to abandon the sinking ship does not understand how quickly things are changing in the country.”

“Trying to use Reformation as a lifeboat to save their own political skins will not work. We have no interest in salvaging political failures.”

He said any defectors must bring some benefits to the party and “genuinely believe in the core values ​​of the Reformation of family, community and country”.

Senior Conservatives believe some other MPs could also defect, although they do not expect a major wave of departures anytime soon.

Reform also said a “well-known Labor figure” would join the party next week.

Former Labor MP and Brexit campaigner Baroness Kate Hoey, who has been an independent peer since 2020, is among those rumored to be a possible defector.

Tice, who replaced Farage due to illness, told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg program on Sunday that Baroness Hoey was a “wonderful person” and a “good friend” when asked if he might join Reform, but refused to confirm whether he would defect.

Baroness Hoey did not say whether she planned to defect, but told Sky News she had not been a Labor member for more than eight years and was “not sure I was that well-known”.

Some commentators have suggested that senior Conservative Party defectors could trigger power struggles within Reform; Jenrick has been touted as a possible shadow chancellor alongside Tice and Reform’s head of policy Zia Yusuf.

Asked whether he would be happy to see Jenrick as shadow chancellor, Tice said the party had a “very broad range of talent” and Farage would “make his decision on the different roles at the appropriate time”.

Jenrick joined Reform on Thursday, hours after he was fired for planning to defect from the Tory shadow cabinet.

Jenrick, a former immigration, housing and health minister, brings the government’s experience to Reform.

But Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “Taking in Robert Jenrick, who has presided over rising NHS waiting lists and the collapse of the criminal justice system in this country, to solve the problems facing this country is like calling on arsonists to put out a fire.”

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch claimed her party was stronger and more united since Jenrick’s departure and said she was not “a team player”.