Controversial MP Lee Anderson announced his defection to the Reform party on Monday in a fresh blow to Rishi Sunak’s premiership.
The Ashfield MP was suspended by the Conservatives last month for making "divisive" and "dangerous" comments about London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
During a press conference announcing he had joined Reform, Mr Anderson doubled down on the remarks.
He said: “I made some remarks a few weeks back about the London Mayor, for which I was stripped of the Whip. Let me be clear right now on this stage. I will not apologise.” He added: “I want my country back.”
But he ruled out calling a by-election in his Red Wall seat, despite in 2020 voting for a Bill that would require any MP who switched parties to call an immediate poll in their seat.
Reform leader Richard Tice, who has previously been described by Mr Anderson as a “Pound shop Nigel Farage”, welcomed the MP to his party.
Announcing the defection, he hailed Mr Anderson as a “champion of the Red Wall”.
Mr Anderson, who is paid £100,000 a year to host a show on GB News, was deputy chairman of the Tory party from February 2023 until January, when he resigned to rebel against the Prime Minister’s Rwanda Bill.
He joined around 60 Tory MPs backing an amendment which was designed to toughen up the immigration legislation, but which critics argued would break international law.
In February he was stripped of the Tory Whip for refusing to apologise for claiming "Islamists" had "got control" of the Mayor of London.
Mr Khan described the remarks, made on GB News, as "pouring fuel on the fire of anti-Muslim hatred".
The MP has represented Ashfield, a former Labour "red wall" seat since 2019 when it switched to the Tories contributing to Boris Johnson's landslide Conservative victory.
Mr Anderson, a former coal miner, had previously been a long term Labour member and was elected as an Ashfield councillor in 2015.
He was suspended by Labour in February 2018 after hiring a digger to move concrete block to stop a traveller camp illegally moving into a local car park.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: "Rishi Sunak's authority lies in tatters after the man he personally appointed to be Deputy Chairman of the Conservatives has defected to another party. This is a Prime Minister that cannot govern his own party let alone the country.
“Even now Sunak is too weak to rule out Nigel Farage joining the Conservative Party. It just shows that there is now hardly a cigarette paper between the Conservative Party and Reform.”
Reform won double-digit vote shares in both the Kingswood and Wellingborough by-elections last month - the party's best ever election results.
Following the polls Mr Farage, Reform's honorary president, said Conservative members would choose him as their leader over Rishi Sunak.
In his role as a GB News presenter, he has been a regular at Tory events, including the launch of Liz Truss's New Conservatives group earlier this year. .
He has insisted there is "zero prospect" of Reform repeating the Brexit Party's 2019 deal with the Conservatives, which saw the party withdraw candidates in hundreds of Tory target seats to help keep Labour from winning.
However, Reform polled poorly in the recent Rochdale by-election which saw George Galloway win by a landslide.
Former Labour MP Simon Danczuk won just 6.3 per cent of the vote for the party coming in sixth place.
Mr Anderson’s move mirrors that of defections by Tory MPs to the UK Independence Party around a decade ago.
In August 2014, Tory MP Douglas Carswell, who was a respected parliamentarian, defected to the UK Independence Party, stood down as MP for Clacton, and then won re-election in a by-election in October, standing for UKIP.
In September of that year, Mark Reckless, the Tory MP for Rochester and Strood, had become the second Conservative member to defect to UKIP.
