Who are all the former Conservative MPs who have defected to Reform?

A steady procession of former – and current – Conservative MPs have defected to Reform UK since March 2024.

Sky News looks at who has made the move to the party that has topped voting intention polls for nearly a year:

20. Nadhim Zahawi

The former chancellor – albeit for two months – became the most senior former Tory MP to move over to Nigel Farage’s camp on 12 January 2026.

Also vaccines minister during the pandemic, Mr Zahawi called the Conservative Party a “defunct brand” and said the UK “really does need Nigel Farage as prime minister”.

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19. Ben Bradley

The former Mansfield MP and vice chair of the Conservative Party under Theresa May joined Reform on 10 December 2025, 17 months after losing his seat.

Also a former leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, he said he had lost trust in both Labour and the Conservatives, and was going to help Reform cut council spending.

18. Chris Green

Ex-Bolton West MP Chris Green switched on 1 December 2025, saying the Tories had “broken trust with Britain” and Reform was the necessary vision for the country.

He was one of three ex-Conservatives to defect that day.

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17. Lia Nici

Having lost her Great Grimsby seat in 2024, former assistant government whip Ms Nici defected on the same day as Mr Green.

While a Tory MP, she told Sky News’ Politics Hub: “I’m probably more Reform than most Reform candidates, to be honest.”

She said the Tories had “lost touch” and now serves as a special adviser to Reform mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, Luke Campbell.

16. Jonathan Gullis

The third Conservative to defect on 1 December 2025, the former Conservative deputy chair represented Stoke-on-Trent North until 2024.

An ex-teacher and school standards minister, Mr Gullis, who is now mayor of Kidsgrove in Staffordshire, said the Tory party had “lost touch with the people it was meant to serve”.

15. Sarah Atherton

A former defence minister, who lost her Wrexham seat in 2024, Ms Atherton defected to Reform on 2 October 2025 after announcing she was quitting the Conservative party two months before.

She said the Tories no longer aligned with her values and said “Britain’s armed forces deserve better” than what Labour and the Conservatives are offering.

14. Maria Caulfield

The ex-nurse and health minister switched on 16 September 2025, as she said the future for those who are “conservative right-minded” is Reform.

Having lost her East Sussex seat of Lewes in 2024, she said the “same people who thought that Brexit would not happen think that Reform will not happen – they are in for a shock”.

13. Danny Kruger

The first sitting Tory MP to defect, Mr Kruger said the Tory party “is over” and Nigel Farage was the “political right’s last hope”.

A shadow cabinet member at the time of his defection on 15 September 2025, he said the flame of conservatism was passing to a new torch and he “fervently” hoped the next PM was Mr Farage.

He is Reform’s head of preparing for government, and distanced himself from remarks two months previously when he said Reform would “spend money like drunken sailors”.

12. Nadine Dorries

The former culture secretary, who stepped down as the Mid Bedfordshire MP in 2023, was the highest-profile Tory to join Reform at the time, on 4 September 2025.

She said the Conservative Party is “dead” and “cannot win the next election” as she said it “removes election-wining prime ministers and replaces them with duds”, in reference to Boris Johnson being replaced by Liz Truss, then Rishi Sunak.

11. Adam Holloway

Gravesham in Kent’s MP for 19 years until losing the seat in 2024, Mr Holloway defected on 30 July 2025, as he said Reform was the only party that has grasped “the scale of our national peril”.

The former army officer said the moment he decided was when Kemi Badenoch told Sky News’ Trevor Phillips there were “real differences” between Reform and the Tories – “and she was right”.

10. Sir Jake Berry

The ex-Tory party chair defected on 9 July 2025, as he said the Conservatives had “lost their way”, and the only way to get a country people can be proud of again “is with Reform in government”.

He lost his Rossendale and Darwen seat to Labour in 2024, after serving as a minister during Boris Johnson, Theresa May and Liz Truss’s governments – a reason he said he knew who had “broken” Britain.

9. David Jones

The Welsh secretary under David Cameron and a Brexit minister under Theresa May revealed on 7 July 2025 he had left the Conservative Party in October the year before – three months after standing down as Clwyd West’s MP – and was joining Reform as it is “the party that best represents my views”.

He said he joined Reform as a “private individual” and had no intention of standing for election. He was the most senior ex-Tory MP to join Reform at the time.

8. Anne Marie Morris

Having lost the Tory whip twice – once for using the n-word in a Brexit debate – then losing her Newton Abbott seat to the Liberal Democrats in 2024, she defected to Reform on 2 July 2025.

She heads up Reform’s social care policy and said the party “offers the vision and leadership Britain so badly needs”.

7. Ross Thomson

Less than a year after claiming the Conservatives were the only ones to see off the “threat” from Mr Farage, the former Aberdeen MP joined Reform on 24 June 2025.

He had stayed out of the limelight after standing down as an MP in 2019, but said “only Reform have the courage and answers to issues facing Scotland and the UK”.

6. Alan Amos

The Tory MP for Hexham in the late 1980s and early 1990s – stepping down after accepting a police caution for indecency on Hampstead Heath – settled on Reform after becoming a Labour councillor, then an independent, then a Conservative mayor in Worcester.

He was elected as a Reform councillor for Worcestershire County Council in May 2025 after being approached by the party, which he said he has “much in common” with.

5. Marco Longhi

After a five-year stint as the Conservative MP for Dudley North, losing it to Labour in 2024, Boris Johnson’s former trade envoy to Brazil defected to Reform on 3 January 2025.

He said “the party of Churchill and Thatcher has transformed into something unrecognisable” and said he planned to stand for election again.

4. Aidan Burley

A former ministerial aide and MP for Cannock Chase from 2010-2015, Mr Burley joined Reform on 10 December 2024, prompting Mr Farage to suggest it was “death by a thousand defections” for the Tory party.

Mr Burley was sacked from his government job after attending a Nazi-themed stag do in France, where he bought a Nazi uniform for the groom to wear and the groom’s brother gave a Nazi-themed toast. He said they were “mocking” the Nazis and there was “no malicious intent”.

3. Dame Andrea Jenkyns

The former assistant government whip and MP for Morley and Outwood in West Yorkshire for nearly a decade, until she lost her seat in 2024, defected on 28 November 2024.

She was engaged in a bitter public row with Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice earlier that year before switching.

Dame Andrea, the Reform mayor of Lincolnshire since May 2025, said she had “always respected” Mr Farage and said they were “politically aligned”.

2. Lucy Allan

The former Tory MP defected after announcing she was backing a Reform candidate to replace her in her Telford seat in 2024, saying he would offer an alternative to “more of the same politics”.

She was suspended from the Tories immediately, on 27 May 2024, but claimed she had already resigned to support Alan Adams.

1. Lee Anderson

The former Conservative Party vice-chair became Reform’s first ever MP after switching sides on 11 March 2024, a month after having the Tory whip suspended over comments about London Mayor Sadiq Khan, which were condemned as Islamophobic.

He said he joined Reform as “I want my country back” and said his parents, who live in his Ashfield constituency, told him they would not be able to vote for him if he remained a Conservative.

He was voted in as a Reform MP for Ashfield in the 2024 general election, being made Reform’s chief whip shortly afterwards.