Why I’m defecting to Reform
The Conservative Party has failed Britain
I was brought up to believe the Conservative Party stood for the values I hold dear: personal responsibility, duty, support for enterprise, low taxes, patriotism and firm border control. For most of my life, I didn’t seriously question whether the party of the day still stood for those things.
I entered public life as a Conservative because I believed it did. I was elected a councillor in 2011 for the village where I was born and raised, became Deputy Leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council in 2014 and Leader in 2017. I later served as Deputy Mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. I backed Brexit and, like millions of others, voted Conservative in December 2019 to “get Brexit done” and to give Boris Johnson a commanding majority.
Yet here I am today, no longer a member of the Conservative Party — and if there were an election tomorrow, I could not vote for it. That is no small thing for me personally, but I am far from alone. Millions feel the same way. The truth is not that we abandoned the Conservative Party; it abandoned us.
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There are many reasons for that break, but one issue crystallised it for me this week: the continuing failure to control immigration, both illegal and legal. Stopping the boats is difficult, but if a government signals that the law will be enforced and that dangerous journeys will not be rewarded, numbers will fall. If it blinks, they will rise. It really is that stark.
I watched the Reform UK press conference on 26 August with great interest. The plan unveiled by Nigel Farage was the most radical yet. Critics will pick apart some of the details, but the bigger point is this: Reform’s package has a better chance of success than anything we have seen for a decade because it is rooted in deterrence and backed by political will. No one doubts the determination of Nigel Farage to stop the boats.
Nothing that has happened in this Parliament has surprised me. Labour’s rhetoric about “smashing the gangs” was always going to collide with legal process and bureaucratic caution. The last Conservative government talked tough and shrank at the decisive moment — the Rwanda policy becoming a symbol of bravado without delivery. Chris Philp, now Shadow Home Secretary, was one of those leading the charge against Reform’s plan after it was trailed in The Times. Yet as Immigration Minister in the last government he failed to make any impression. Kemi Badenoch, now Conservative leader, was absent when Rwanda legislation could have been toughened, and will likely now float leaving the ECHR — but only in response to Reform pressure, and with caveats attached. And when Boris Johnson had the chance to show resolve, with planes on the runway to Rwanda, he bowed to a late-night European Court injunction instead of ignoring it.
The price for these failures is not paid by political parties in Westminster; it is paid by communities up and down the country whose services and social cohesion are stretched by a system that is not working.
Look abroad and the lesson is consistent. When Australia confronted a similar crisis, only the toughest deterrents combined with unblinking resolve made the difference. In the United States, where enforcement has recently been tightened after years of drift, crossings have fallen sharply. The precise institutional mechanisms vary by country; the principle does not. Half-measures fail.
Predictably, Reform’s plan has been attacked by the usual chorus. Campaign groups condemned it; Labour and the Conservatives rushed to say it would not work. Prominent figures who previously held the levers of power now lecture us about what is “impossible” — the very people who failed to deliver when they had their chance. Voters are tired of this. They have heard the speeches. They want outcomes.
That is why the fetish for “detail” in this debate is often a red herring. We have had detail — reams of it — and it has not been implemented. Any plan, however carefully drafted, will face legal challenges and political opposition. Provisions will need to adapt as events unfold. The real test is simpler: does the leader of the day possess the courage and determination to push through? Will they stare down entrenched interests, navigate the legal minefields, and keep moving until the policy works in practice?
On that test, recent Conservative leadership has failed. Talk of leaving the ECHR appears when Reform’s polling ticks up, only to be wrapped in caveats. Whatever the legal argument, the political message was unmistakable: the government would always blink. And once trust is lost in this way, it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.
Trust, in fact, is at the heart of this crisis. A government that cannot deliver on one of the most visible and high-profile issues of the day inevitably sees its credibility corrode across the board. If the public cannot trust its leaders to control borders, why should they trust them on tax, the economy, housing, or the NHS? Failure in one key area undermines everything else it does.
Opponents of Reform can and will nit-pick. They will produce legal memos and moral lectures. But unless they can demonstrate credibility — not words, but a track record and a plan they truly intend to deliver — they will not be believed. The British public is fair-minded. They will support firm action against those who break our laws by entering the country illegally, provided it is even-handed and effective. What they will not accept is more theatre without outcomes, or governments they cannot trust.
It is for these reasons that Reform’s momentum continues to grow, and why the future of British politics looks set to be one of the most fascinating in decades.
