Nigel Farage bags another Tory defector

LONDON — Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party unveiled its newest addition Thursday: a Boris Johnson-loving former Conservative MP who hopes to bag a key mayoralty later this year.
Andrea Jenkyns — a dyed-in-the-wool Brexiteer and one of the most vocal supporters of Johnson as his government collapsed in 2022 — will stand to be mayor of Greater Lincolnshire in May.
The move was announced at a press conference in London Thursday as Reform UK, the populist, anti-immigration challenger party which ran second to Labour in several seats at July’s general election, said it had passed 100,000 paying members for the first time.
Jenkyns argued that the Conservatives, whom she served as a member of parliament before losing her seat in July, had now “lost their way,” and stressed that leaving a party she had “cherished for decades” was not easy.
“I have long believed in conservatism and the principles it should stand for,” she said.
“I stayed loyal and fought to the bitter end in the general election, going down with the proverbial ship. But the truth is undeniable, the ship is sinking and perhaps, sadly, beyond salvage. Enough is enough.”
Jenkyns is entering the race to run the new Greater Lincolnshire combined authority, a large new local government setup that will be given real funding powers by the Labour government in Westminster.
Jenkyns’ former party was kicked out of office in the July general election, with the Conservatives slumping to their lowest-ever tally of MPs in the House of Commons. Reform meanwhile is on an upswing — it returned five MPs at the election, with Farage himself winning a Commons seat for the first time and now turning his sights on the governing Labour Party.
“I was elected as a Conservative, and I got knocked out as a Conservative, but I feel, unfortunately, the party has become tired,” Jenkyns said Thursday.