Former Tory MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns joins Reform UK

Former Conservative MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns has joined Reform UK and will run to be mayor of Lincolnshire.

Dame Andrea joined Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at a press conference where he announced her defection and said she had become the 100,000th member of his party.

Meanwhile, former party deputy leader Ben Habib said he was leaving the party.

The former Tory minister used a photo of Mr Farage on her election campaign leaflet earlier this year – when she was campaigning to keep her Conservative seat.

Asked how long she had been thinking about defecting, Dame Andrea said she has “always respected” Mr Farage and noted her work with Richard Tice during Brexit.

She said: “We are politically aligned. And how long have I been thinking about it? Well, I mean, I was tempted before the general election, but I am a loyal person to a party.

“I might not be loyal to prime ministers, as we’ve seen in the past, but I’m loyal to parties, and I believed, as I said, in going down with that ship fighting.

“I was elected as a Conservative, and I got knocked out as a Conservative but I feel, unfortunately, the party has become tired.”

Dame Andrea was a staunch supporter of Brexit and Boris Johnson.

She submitted a no-confidence letter in former prime minister Rishi Sunak last November.

A Conservative Party spokesman said: “Reform may have gained one new member but it took just 12 minutes after the announcement for them to lose a founder and former deputy leader of their party. This tells you all you need to know about their ‘professionalisation’.

“The Conservative Party knows it has work to do to renew the party and win back the support of the British people and that work has already started with Kemi Badenoch as leader.

“The best way to defeat Labour at local or national level is to vote Conservative.”

Former Reform deputy leader Mr Habib said he was “saddened” that he could no longer support the party.

“I’m saddened to share that I can no longer support Reform UK. Their decision to silence me from speaking to branches and reluctance to democratise have left me with no choice,” he posted on X.

Clacton MP Mr Farage said he had talked to other Tory MPs about joining Reform but said it was “not my priority” and that he is “not going chasing people”.

“This is not designed to be an alternative Conservative Party. This is a completely different, fresh political movement,” he said.

Mr Farage said Reform UK now has more than 400 branches up and running and that the party has vetted and approved more than 1,000 candidates for the May 2026 local elections, out of 2,200 it needs.

“We put in place vetting standards far more rigorous than any political party in Britain has ever undergone before for people standing for local election,” he said.

“Those candidates will be beginning to be adopted, in fact, starting at the end of this week.”

He did not say whether he had already known the full extent of Reform MP James McMurdock’s assault conviction 18 years ago, which The Times reported last week went further than previously known publicly.

The former investment banker did not publicly disclose his conviction for assault before being elected and claimed he had “pushed” his partner when details were first revealed this summer.

But an official record of his sentencing obtained by the newspaper showed he was detained in a youth offenders’ institution for 21 days for kicking the victim “around four times”.

Mr Farage said on Thursday: “It was a long time ago, he’s been forgiven.”

He reiterated that for the July election, “hundreds of candidates had not been through a vetting procedure at all of any kind”.

Asked if in future, Reform candidates could be people who have served time in prison, he said: “All sorts of people in life get second chances but we are going to set a very, very high standard.”

Mr Farage also celebrated his personal TikTok reaching one million followers, half of whom he said were under the age of 25.