Marco Longhi, the former Conservative MP for Dudley North, has joined Nigel Farage’s Reform UK after accusing his old party of being “captured by the influence of the left-wing masquerading as conservatism”.
He is the third former MP to defect from Reform UK since last year’s general election, following Aidan Burley and Dame Andrea Jenkyns.
Longhi, who lost his seat in July, said the Conservative Party he once identified with was “invisible” and said he could no longer stand in the “uniparty flood” towards a “left-wing agenda”. He pledged that if he is re-elected, he will remain loyal to “the people,” not the party leadership.
His defection coincides with a new “mega-poll” by Stonehaven, based on 17,000 voters, which suggests Reform UK will take up to 120 seats if the general election is held today. It also shows that Labor will drop from 411 MPs to 278, while the Tories will increase to 157 seats from 121. of the northern wall of England called red.
Other former Conservatives have joined 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, the husband of former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, has also defected recently, though he dismissed any suggestion he might follow suit.
