Tory Councillors Say They Are Being Offered Jobs And Seats To Defect To Reform
Nigel Farage has set a May 7 deadline for MPs and councillors to defect to Reform UK (Alamy)
4 min read
Conservative councillors nationwide have told PoliticsHome they are being offered senior roles and parliamentary selection to defect to Reform UK in the coming months.
Reform leader Nigel Farage recently said that the 7 May local elections would be the deadline for current Tories to switch to his party.
Last week, former shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick became the most high-profile politician to defect from the Conservatives to Reform. He joins a list of former senior Tories who are now in Reform, which includes former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, who also defected last week, and former cabinet ministers Nadine Dorries and Jake Berry. Sitting MPs Danny Kruger and Andrew Rosindell have also made the switch.
Several others, including Conservative Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, have reportedly turned down offers from Farage, according to the Financial Times.
Reform, which won control of 12 councils at last year's local elections and continues to lead the national opinion polls, is expected to make more significant gains when Scotland, Wales and some parts of England go to the polls this May.
Seemingly in a push to continue the flow of defections, several Conservative councillors claim that they are privately being offered jobs and opportunities to join Farage's party.
John Cope, Chair of the Conservative Councillors' Association, told PoliticsHome: "Councillors across the country have reported being approached with offers of funding, roles, and cabinet positions if they join Reform.
“The running joke is that more parliamentary seats have been promised than actually exist.”
Seb James, a Conservative councillor at Worcestershire County Council, where Reform runs the local authority as a minority administration, alleges that in the last few weeks, he has been promised a "safe seat" for parliamentary selection if he defects to the party, an offer which he says he has received several times, as well as a cabinet role in the council.
"I was offered the cabinet member for education on county [council] with him [the current occupant] in the room the time they were offering it," he told PoliticsHome.
In response to this claim, a Reform source insisted nobody in the party's Worcestershire administration had approached James about defecting.
A Conservative councillor at a different Reform-run council, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told PoliticsHome: “[Reform] said I could be an MP.”
They added: “[Reform] are busy trying to fill all the seats up for the next election, which they seem to feel might happen any day. They want to make sure they've got somebody in every seat up and down the country, so they're offering it to everybody that they come across."
The councillor said that several senior councillors in the local Conservative group had had offers from Reform, claiming, “they would be given preferential treatment for positions”.
"In the role that I previously held in the cabinet office, I have been targeted several times to cross the floor and take that role up again."
PoliticsHome has also seen a message sent by a Reform branch organiser to a Conservative councillor standing for re-election, offering to move a current Reform candidate somewhere else to accommodate a defector.
A separate councillor added that they had been “collared” by Reform cabinet members after a meeting and offered a “senior position” in exchange for defecting, as well as parliamentary selection.
Another Conservative councillor at a Reform-controlled council said: "I was given a message saying that if I were to come over to Reform, I’d get a cabinet position and be very well looked after.”
A Reform UK spokesperson said: "Reform has not and will not pay anyone to defect to the party, nor is anyone in the party able to guarantee parliamentary selection.
"We are clear that we only want people to come to us who will add to the party. Not people who are trying to save their careers. If Conservative councillors want to put their hands up, say they’re ashamed of what their party did in national and local government and commit to fixing the damage they caused, they're very welcome to join us."
A Labour Party spokesperson told PoliticsHome: “Nigel Farage is hellbent on stuffing his party with more and more failed Tories, who broke our public services and hammered family finances."
In a letter to Conservative MPs earlier this week, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch sought to play down the significance of recent high-profile defections to Reform, writing that "the events of recent days are a minor setback, not a defining moment".
She said Conservatives who no longer wanted to be in the party were "free to make other choices", and added: "Those who want to destroy or undermine the party will be dealt with firmly and fairly. There will be no hard feelings about that as they will create space for those who share our values and purpose."
