Berry's jumping ship leaves one question: who is next?

This latest blow for the Tories is significant because it shows that professional politicians, not just angry ideologues, are now willing to follow Nigel Farage, writes David Maddox

- David Maddox

The defection of Sir Jake Berry, a former Tory chair, to Reform was a genuine shock on Wednesday night. As Kemi Badenoch prepared to give a major speech just hours later on welfare reform, it left her looking increasingly lost and irrelevant. Already, there were questions over why she had chosen yesterday of all days to deliver a major speech when the news was very much focused on migration and the mini-summit between Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, who would be grabbing the attention.

But with Sir Jake’s defection, there would only ever be one subject anybody would ask her about at her press conference: “Who is leaving next?”

While he was not the first ex-Tory MP to be converted to Nigel Farage’s cause, he is without doubt the most substantial and significant to do so. And he will not be the last.

He also represented a very different type of Conservative to join Reform. Figures such as Lee Anderson, Marco Longhi, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, David Jones and Anne Marie Morris were all on the hardcore Brexiteer right wing of the party, but that is not the case with Sir Jake.

Last time he spoke to The Independent, he was at the launch event for Tom Tugendhat’s leadership bid. Tugendhat supposedly represented the type of Tories who would rather vote Lib Dem than Farage.

Sir Jake had been a Remainer during the Brexit referendum; he was also a Boris Johnson loyalist and served under Liz Truss. He is essentially a career politician, someone who was an MP for 14 years, sought ministerial office, was not on the right of the party, and had been a Tory for 30 years.