Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has been invited to apply to join Reform UK – using a special website the party set up for defectors. It would mean providing her National Insurance number, a scanned image of her passport page and a utility bill stating her address. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has suggested Ms Mahmood could consider quitting Labour after she announced plans to cut immigration. And Reform policy chief Zia Yusuf said that Ms Mahmood might be welcome if she really believes in stopping small boat crossings to the UK. He said: “If she really believes that, then who knows? Maybe. Maybe she does. Shabana Mahmood really does want to stop the boats.
“If she actually wants to do it. Then you can go to the Reform Party. UK forward slash defections. You can, fill out a form.” The webpage www.reformparty.uk/defections was set up “given the volume of current and former elected officials wishing to join Reform from other parties,” Reform says. The party now has a dedicated team handling applications, and promises would-be defectors: “Your application will be handled in the strictest confidence.”
Applicants are told to provide a photograph, their full CV, a scan of their passport and links to all their social media accounts – so Reform can check what they have said in the past.
But only people who want to help Reform will be accepted, not those simply looking to jump ship to the party that is ahead in the polls.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told the Express: “In terms of the defectors the rules are very simple. They have to people who will add to us, help us as a party, help us as a movement, as opposed to people simply trying to revive their political careers.”
Mr Farage is not expecting an application from Ms Mahmood after she told Sky News: “Nigel Farage can sod off. I am not interested in anything he has to say.”
But he also warned her plan to cut immigration was doomed to fail, saying that although he agreed with some of the “rhetoric” he did not believe it stood any chance of success, not least because Labour MPs would set out to undermine it.
Mr Farage said: “Despite her protestations, I thought a lot of what Shabana Mahmood said yesterday was driven directly by fear that Labour are losing votes to Reform.
“And rhetorically we would agree with a lot of what the Home Secretary said.”
Mr Farage argued that despite the focus on illegal migration, “economically it is legal migration that is doing enormous damage to the British economy”.
He also highlighted Labour’s plan to require asylum seekers with assets to contribute to their bed-and-board, a measure which has been described as seizing valuables from asylum seekers. Mr Farage said Labour would have attacked him if he had proposed anything similar.
