Reform UK has been challenged to rule out recruiting Liz Truss to its ranks, after her one-time party chairman, Sir Jake Berry, became the latest former Conservative MP to defect from the Tories.
The Liberal Democrats described Berry, who like Truss lost his seat at the 2024 general election, as an “architect of economic disaster” — a reference to the September 2022 mini-budget.
In a fresh blow to Kemi Badenoch, the embattled Tory leader, Berry said his former party had “abandoned the British people” in a statement last night.
In an article for the Sun newspaper, Berry said he was leaving the Conservative Party after 25 years as a member and 14 as an MP. He added that Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s party, was the “last chance to pull Britain back from terminal decline”.
Sir Jake, who once led the Northern Research Group of “red wall” Tory MPs, accused the Conservative Party of “abandoning the British people” but insisted he was not “giving up”.
He added: “If you were deliberately trying to wreck the country, you’d be hard-pressed to do a better job than the last two decades of Labour and Tory rule.”
Berry served as the MP Rossendale and Darwen in Lancashire between 2010 and 2024. He held several ministerial posts including in the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Energy and Climate Change and the Cabinet Office.
Most notably, he was chairman of the Conservative Party from September to October 2022, during Truss’ brief and chaotic tenure as prime minister.
Berry is the latest former Tory MP to join Reform UK, just days after Farage celebrated the defection of David Jones. Jones, like Berry, is an ex-cabinet minister.
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Former Conservative cabinet minister David Jones joins Reform UK
The Lib Dems have now accused Reform UK of turning into a “Truss tribute act.” Responding to Berry’s defection, the party’s deputy leader, Daisy Cooper, issued a direct challenge to Farage.
She said: “Nigel Farage needs to immediately rule out Liz Truss joining Reform following the defection of yet another one of her mini-budget buddies.
“Reform is looking more like a Truss tribute act every day that goes by. Far from just praising her disastrous mini budget as the best thing since sliced bread, Farage is actively recruiting the architects of the economic disaster that left struggling households reeling.”
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Not content with taking advice from Liz Truss, Nigel Farage has now tempted her Tory Party chairman into his ranks. It’s clear Farage wants Liz Truss’s reckless economics, which crashed our economy and sent mortgages spiralling, to be Reform’s blueprint for Britain. It’s a recipe for disaster and working people would be left paying the price.
“Only our Labour government is putting more money in people’s pockets, boosting British jobs, and delivering the renewal our country needs through our plan for change.”
A Conservative Party spokesman said: “Reform support increasing the benefits bill by removing the two-child cap, and nationalising British industry. By contrast the Conservatives, under new leadership, will keep making the case for sound money, lower taxes and bringing the welfare bill under control.
“We wish Jake well in his new high spend, high tax party.”
Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.
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