1.3.3 – Emerging parties
On Sunday 18 January, Andrew Rosindell announced he had left the Conservatives and joined Reform UK. The MP for Romford became the third sitting MP to do so since the 2024 General Election, joining Danny Kruger and Robert Jenrick. His decision to cross the floor brought Reform’s total number of MPs up to seven, on a par with Sinn Féin (who don’t take their seats) and just two behind the SNP’s nine.
With political commentators still speculating on the impact of Robert Jenrick’s defection, news of Rosindell’s defection caught many off guard. With the prospect of further defections, Kemi Badenoch has taken a somewhat combative approach with her parliamentary party, telling them that any MP who sought to ‘undermine or destroy the party will be dealt with firmly and fairly’, and that ‘there will be no hard feelings about [anyone who does defect] as they will create space for those who share our values and purpose’. Such unambiguous language makes any prospect of a pact between the two parties even less likely, despite the wishes of some.
There is little in recent history to compare what is happening at present to in terms of MPs crossing the floor to join an emerging party. In February 2019, 11 MPs joined the newly formed pro-European Change UK group in Parliament – eight from Labour and three from the Conservatives. However, Change UK was extremely short-lived, and was very much a product of the turbulent Brexit years. Six of its members resigned within six months, and the movement was dissolved following the general election of that year.
Looking further back, the emergence of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981 is perhaps more comparable to what is happening now. Founded by moderate Labour MPs following a shift to the left in party policy, the group eventually attracted 28 Labour MPs and one from the Conservatives. It also won four by-elections between 1981 and 1987.
Whilst a similarity can be drawn from the fact that an emerging party was attracting members from an opposition party recently defeated at the polls, it must be remembered that the SDP was a Labour splinter group – the product of disaffected Labour members, rather than a standalone party seeking defections. Moreover, the SDP very quickly formed an electoral alliance with the Liberals (later merging and becoming the Liberal Democrats), thereby losing their individual identity. The prospects of Reform doing this are far less likely for reasons outlined above.
Reform UK’s rise is therefore quite unique in British politics. Whilst UKIP succeeding in causing two Conservatives to defect in 2014 (Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless), Reckless lost his seat at the next general election, and the party failed to win any new seats in 2015, leaving Douglas Carswell as the sole UKIP voice in the Commons.
Without an obvious precedent, it is more difficult to predict what will happen next to Reform. Farage will be keen to ensure that he does not lose any further MPs (two of the five MPs elected under the party banner in 2024 have left the party), and the aim of attracting well-known Labour figures continues to elude them. However, even a steady stream of defections could soon see Reform leapfrog the SNP and become the fourth-largest party, and help to keep its upward trajectory.