Suella Braverman defected to Reform UK on Monday with an attack on the Tories after claims she had mental health problems.
The Conservatives were forced to retract a statement attacking their former home secretary following a backlash.
The party’s response to the latest defection initially included the sentence: ‘The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella’s mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy.’ But that was pulled an hour and a half later, having been ‘sent out in error’.
Brian Dow, deputy chief executive of the Rethink Mental Illness charity, criticised the statement and accused the Tories of ‘trivialising’ mental health and using it as a ‘political football’.
‘Employers should never disclose any details about the mental health of their employees or former staff,’ he said. ‘Doing so says far more about them than the person they are referring to.’
At a press conference last night, Nigel Farage said Reform UK would not ‘lower ourselves’ to ‘abusive’ jibes.
And after outlining her reasons for leaving Kemi Badenoch’s party, Ms Braverman said: ‘When I diagnosed all of these problems after the last general election, the leader herself said that I was having a nervous breakdown, something she seems to have repeated again today. As Nigel said, those attacks say more about them than they do about me.’
Suella Braverman defected to Reform UK on Monday with an attack on the Tories after claims she had mental health problems
Britain’s Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks during a press conference with former British Home Secretary Ms Braverman
The outspoken former attorney general became the latest high-profile Tory scalp for Nigel Farage’s party, becoming the third MP to switch sides in the past ten days following Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell.
After announcing her defection at an event launching Veterans for Reform on Monday morning, Ms Braverman said: ‘When push comes to shove, they go AWOL. No courage, no backbone, no resolve. … There is only one man in British politics who has been courageously consistent for his country. And that man is Nigel Farage.’
It brings the number of sitting Reform MPs in the Commons to eight but leaves Mr Farage struggling to fend off ‘Tories 2.0′ jibes, with his party now having more members of Liz Truss’ Cabinet than Mrs Badenoch’s top team.
‘I can’t win, can I?’ he said. ‘Either people say you’re a one-man band or you’re an uncontrollable rabble.’
A promised Labour defection may, however, have fallen through. But former Brexit minister Lord Frost hinted he could be the next to switch sides, pointedly saying that he and Ms Braverman had ‘always seen things the same way’.
A senior Tory source said her defection had been a matter of ‘when, not if’ for months – and accused Mr Farage of helping Labour by shifting attention away from the party’s civil war over Andy Burnham.
‘The Government is tearing itself apart over Burnham and Farage once again seems more interested in trying to destroy the Conservative Party than in taking on Labour,’ they added.
At a hastily-arranged press conference last night, Mr Farage dismissed the claim, saying: ‘We are building an election-winning machine by uniting the centre-Right of politics around Reform.’
It was only last week that Ms Braverman was batting off suggestions she would defect. But on Monday she said she had ‘come home’.
A senior Tory source said her defection had been a matter of ‘when, not if’ for months – and accused Mr Farage of helping Labour by shifting attention away from the party’s civil war over Andy Burnham
A Tory spokesman responded by saying: ‘She says she feels that she has ‘come home’, which will come as a surprise to the people who chose not to elect a Reform MP in her constituency in 2024.
‘There are some people who are MPs because they care about their communities and want to deliver a better country. There are others who do it for their personal ambition.
‘Suella stood for leader of the Conservatives in 2022 and came sixth, behind Kemi and Tom Tugendhat.
‘In 2024, she could not even muster enough supporters to get on the ballot. She has now decided to try her luck with Nigel Farage, who said last year he didn’t want her in Reform.’
In Ms Braverman’s Fareham and Waterlooville constituency in Hampshire on Monday, some said she has ‘taken too long to jump ship’ and join Reform.
Others, meanwhile, accused her of committing ‘treachery’ and demanded a by-election.
But Ms Braverman rejected these accusations. She acknowledged that some constituents would feel ‘disappointed and upset’ but insisted that the political views she had campaigned on at the last election, including leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, had not changed.
‘I’m on the Right – proudly on the Right – but the Right have lost the battle for the Conservative Party,’ she said.
