The former Conservative minister Andrea Jenkyns has joined Reform UK and will run to be the party’s candidate for mayor of Lincolnshire.
The former MP, who lost her seat at the last general election, was at an event on Thursday where Nigel Farage said that she just happened to be the 100,000th new Reform member.
Her decision to join the party comes as a surprise after she engaged in a bitter public row with Reform UK earlier this year, after claiming she was wooed by a pro-Brexit businessman who she said had offered her jobs to defect.
She was bitterly critical of Reform in July after an attack by the party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, who had accused her of bribing her Reform general election rival in the constituency of Leeds South West and Morley.
On that occasion, Jenkyns insisted she never came close to defecting to Reform and described Tice’s “wild accusations” as “libellous” and an attempt to “deflect from his own embarrassing behaviour”.
Tice was not to be seen on Thursday as Jenkyns joined Farage on stage at a central London hotel where she said that her old party was a sinking ship that was beyond salvaging.
Asked how long she had been thinking about defecting, she said she has “always respected” Nigel Farage and noted her work with Tice during the Brexit campaign.
“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,” she added.
“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.”
Jenykns has long been a controversial figure in Tory ranks and campaigned with a picture of Farage on leaflets even while in the party.
In 2022, as a newly appointed education minister, she responded to complaints after making a rude gesture outside Downing Street, saying she had been provoked by a “baying mob”.
Farage said he was looking forward to “my new friend Elon Musk” making cuts to the US civil service and it was a blueprint that Reform UK hoped to implement “if things go well” at the next general election.
