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BBC<\/p>\nBBC<\/p>\n
Former Conservative minister Nadine Dorries has defected to Reform UK.<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
Dorries served as culture secretary and as a health minister under Boris Johnson, of whom she was a close ally.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Dorries’ defection comes as Reform members head to Birmingham for the party’s annual conference.<\/p>\n
She stepped down as an MP in 2023, after 18 years in the House of Commons, with an attack on then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and has since been critical of current leader Kemi Badenoch. <\/p>\n
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.<\/p>\n
You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App<\/a>. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X<\/a> to get the latest alerts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BBC Former Conservative minister Nadine Dorries has defected to Reform UK. Speaking to the Daily Mail, the ex-MP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-397945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115147502571527063","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}