{"id":304685,"date":"2026-01-26T17:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T17:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/304685\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T17:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T17:07:07","slug":"suella-braverman-defects-to-nigel-farages-reform-and-slams-tory-lies-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/304685\/","title":{"rendered":"Suella Braverman defects to Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform and slams Tory \u2018lies\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former UK home secretary Suella Braverman has become the latest Tory MP<\/a> to defect to Nigel Farage\u2019s<\/a> Reform UK<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ms Braverman, who had been widely expected to follow her former Tory colleague Robert Jenrick<\/a> into the upstart populist right wing party, told a gathering of Reform activists in central London on Monday that \u201cBritain is broken and suffering\u201d.<\/p>\n

The anti-immigration hardliner launched a blistering attack on her former party over its \u201cfailures\u201d on issues such as asylum seekers and legal migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m calling time on Tory betrayal. I\u2019m calling time on Tory lies. I\u2019m calling time on a party that keeps making promises with zero intention of keeping them,\u201d said Ms Braverman, as she was unveiled at a rally for former military veterans who support Reform.<\/p>\n

Her defection brings the ranks of Reform MPs up to eight, including four former Tories who have crossed over since the last general election in 2024. <\/p>\n

Mr Jenrick, another immigration hardliner, defected to Reform barely two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Where does defection of \u2018insanely ambitious\u2019 Robert Jenrick leave the Tories?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Ms Braverman, however, is arguably the most senior former Tory to defect, having served as home secretary under prime ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Mr Jenrick never served in cabinet.<\/p>\n

Mr Farage\u2019s party leads in all national opinion polls in Britain, averaging about 34 per cent in most surveys, a double-digit lead over its rivals in the Tories and Labour.<\/p>\n

The defections in recent weeks of several high-profile Tories, however, have raised concerns among some Reform backers that the party may now struggle to appeal to the disgruntled Labour supporters it is targeting in working-class districts across Britain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former UK home secretary Suella Braverman has become the latest Tory MP to defect to Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,18027,13,14,6,56,18028,11,12,15,16,5,20567,20566,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-304685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-conservative-and-unionist-party","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-kemi-badenoch","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-nigel-farage","22":"tag-reform-uk","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115962501103146671","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}