2026 Tory Crisis: Rosindell Defects to Reform Over Chagos Fail

Andrew Rosindell has resigned from the Conservative Party and joined Reform UK, becoming the latest Tory MP to defect to Nigel Farage’s party amid a period of accelerating political turmoil on the right.

Rosindell Defects to Reform

The long serving MP for Romford said the Conservatives were now “irreparably bound to the mistakes of previous governments” and unwilling to take meaningful responsibility for decisions that had, in his view, left the country in prolonged decline. He confirmed that he spoke with Nigel Farage on Sunday evening before agreeing to switch allegiance.

Farage welcomed Rosindell as “a great patriot” and said he would be “a great addition to our team”, while a Conservative source dismissed the move as further evidence that Farage was doing Kemi Badenoch’s “spring cleaning” for her.

Rosindell’s defection follows that of Robert Jenrick, who joined Reform last Thursday only hours after being sacked from the Conservative shadow cabinet by party leader Kemi Badenoch. Badenoch had accused Jenrick of plotting to defect, a charge he did not deny.

In a statement posted on X, Rosindell said that the “views and concerns of constituents such as mine in Romford have been consistently ignored for far too long”.

“Our country has endured a generation of managed decline,” he wrote. “Radical action is now required to reverse the damaging decisions of the past and to forge a new course for Britain.”

Rosindell, who joined the Conservative Party at the age of 14 and most recently served as a shadow foreign affairs minister, pointed to the Labour government’s decision to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as a key factor in his decision. He said the Conservatives had failed both in government and opposition to properly challenge the move.

“Both the government and the opposition have been complicit in the surrender of this sovereign British territory to a foreign power,” he said.

Farage echoed that argument, saying the Conservatives’ handling of the Chagos issue had “tipped him over the edge”.

The defection comes just hours after Farage insisted that Reform was “not a rescue charity for every panicky Tory MP” and would not become a rebranded Conservative Party. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said Reform would accept no further defectors after the local elections on 7 May.

A Conservative source said Rosindell had been “threatening to defect for months”, denying it as recently as Saturday. “We’re not going to be distracted from holding this disastrous Labour government to account,” the source added.

Labour Party chair Anna Turley criticised the move, saying: “The stench of a failed and dying Tory Party now engulfs Reform. Nigel Farage is trying to rehabilitate their disastrous record. The public won’t be fooled.”

A Liberal Democrat source described the switch as “a change of rosette for a career politician worried about getting a P45”, adding that voters were tired of hearing Britain was broken from “the very same people who broke it”.

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Rosindell becomes Reform UK’s seventh MP and the third sitting Conservative MP to join the party, following Jenrick and Danny Kruger. Around 20 former Tory MPs have now defected to Reform, including former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, who joined earlier this month.

Jenrick, announcing his own defection last week, said the Conservatives had “broken” the country and “betrayed its voters”, arguing the UK was now in decline and needed new leadership outside what he called a failed political consensus.

Badenoch responded by calling Jenrick’s exit “a good day” for the Conservatives and said he was now “Nigel Farage’s problem”. Writing in the Telegraph, she argued Reform was destined to fail by welcoming “toxic people” whose loyalty was questionable.

“A movement built on grievance and serial disloyalty is doomed to fail,” she wrote, “and they will be at each other’s throats soon enough.”