Reform’s Ann Widdecombe reveals actual motive Tory MPs are leaping ship | UK | News | EUROtoday

Conservative MPs are defecting not due to a single flashpoint, however as a result of they really feel the social gathering “isn’t cutting the mustard” and danger being left behind by a rising Reform motion, Reform UK’s Ann Widdecombe has stated. Ms Widdecombe, who served because the Conservative MP for Maidstone and The Weald from 1987 till 2010, held a collection of presidency posts beneath John Major.

These included Parliamentary Under-Secretary on the Department of Social Security and the Department of Employment, and Minister of State on the Home Office from 1995 to 1997. She later served in William Hague’s shadow cupboard as Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Shadow Home Secretary. However, she give up the social gathering in 2019, becoming a member of the Brexit Party and serving as an MEP.

Ms Widdecombe stated: “In my case, there was one single issue: Brexit. It wasn’t being delivered, Theresa May was making an awful mess of it, and there were Tories who were even trying to frustrate it. I’d had enough; so there was a single issue.”

She stated the drivers behind present defections to Reform are broader. Ms Widdecombe stated: “What’s driving people out now is not one single issue.

“It is just, I think, a feeling that the Tory party isn’t cutting it—isn’t ‘cutting the mustard.’ It’s not getting anywhere. There is another party with the same values and the same principles, and that party is going somewhere at the moment. It’s that sort of feeling that if they stay behind with the Tories, they’ll ‘miss the bus.’”

Ms Widdecombe’s remarks come as Reform UK continues to attract high-profile Conservatives, including former Home Secretary Suella Braverman and ex-Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, who defected to Reform in January 2026 amid wider right-of-centre discontent with the Conservative leadership.

Asked whether there is a point at which a defection looks like self-interest rather than principle, Ms Widdecombe said timing varied according to the individual.

She said: “You know when that moment has come; I don’t think it can be externally dictated.” She acknowledged that a few MPs may be motivated by personal electoral calculations but said most see the Conservative Party as failing to resonate with voters.

She added: “One or two of them may be trying to save their seats, but on the whole, I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve talked to people like Danny Krueger, and it’s just an acceptance that the Tories are just not cutting through.”

On the impression of defections, Ms Widdecombe predicted that Nigel Farage’s social gathering would profit from expertise: “We need experience, as I’ve said umpteen times.

You can’t have it both ways. If you say we need experience, then it’s no good saying we shouldn’t take anybody with it. If people have got experience of high office, then it’s there.”

Addressing concerns about the “baggage” that former ministers carry, she said: “They will be the ones who were in high office. What follows is that they know how things are done.”

The Conservative Party’s long history as an ideological coalition means many right-wing figures remained because there was previously “nowhere else to go,” but that the existence of Reform changes the calculus for some.

Ms Widdecombe stated: “It’s not surprising that you find right-wingers there, because there was nowhere else to go. But now there is somewhere else to go.”