Yet another former Conservative MP has joined Reform UK, four months after Zia Yusuf had announced “no more Tories” would be accepted by the party.
Jane Stevenson was elected the Tory MP Wolverhampton North East in 2019, but lost her seat to Labour at the 2024 general election.
After the Reform conference last week, Stevenson announced she was joining the party.
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Stevenson said she had left the Conservatives several months ago and wanted to pursue “more radical solutions to our country’s problems,” the BBC reports.
“I especially like Reform’s work from Danny Kruger on reducing and reorganising Whitehall/quangos and bringing back ministerial power and accountability,” she said.
Stevenson has now become the latest of several former Tories to join Reform. The amount of Tory defections joining the party had sparked criticism from some of its supporters, who asked themselves how Reform could be anti-establishment when it was accepting so many failed Conservatives who had been in power.
In response to this, Zia Yusuf had pledged at the start of this year that Reform would “accept no more Tories” after a deadline of May 7.
On May 8, Yusuf then wrote on X: “THE MAY 7 TORY DEADLINE HAS PASSED! NO MORE TORIES!”
So, when the news of Stevenson’s change of party broke, many wondered if it was another broken promise from Yusuf and Reform.
However, Stevenson has said she actually joined Reform “online before the deadline” and “joined months ago.”
This prompted a characteristically furious Yusuf to deny that he had broken a promise or been undermined by his party.