Marco Longhi, former Conservative MP for Dudley North, has joined Nigel Farage’s Reform UK after accusing his old party of being “in the grip of a left-wing influence masquerading as conservatism”.
He is the third ex-Tory MP to defect to Reform UK since last year’s general election, after Aidan Burley and Dame Andrea Jenkyns.
Longhi, who lost his seat in July, claimed the Conservative Party he once identified with had become “unrecognisable” and said he could no longer tolerate the “one-party drift” towards a “left-wing agenda”. He promised that if re-elected, he would remain loyal to ‘the people’, rather than to the party leadership.
His defection coincides with a new Stonehaven ‘mega-poll’, based on 17,000 voters, showing that Reform UK could win up to 120 seats if a general election were held today. It also indicates that Labor would drop from its current 411 MPs to 278, while the Tories would rise from 121 to 157 seats. Although Reform UK currently has just five MPs, the poll suggests the biggest gains could come in East Anglia, Essex and more. of the so-called red wall in Northern England.
Other former Conservative figures have been drawn to Farage’s party, including Nick Candy, who serves as the billionaire treasurer of Reform UK, and Tim Montgomerie, founder of the ConservativeHome website. Rael Braverman, husband of former Interior Secretary Suella Braverman, also recently defected, although she rejected any suggestion she might follow.