Former Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman has defected to Reform U.K., as leader Nigel Farage showed a continued willingness to accept members of the party he hopes to replace as the standard-bearer for Britain¡¯s political right.

¡°I feel like I¡¯ve come home,¡± Braverman, 45, told an audience of veterans in London as she announced she was leaving the Tories for Farage¡¯s Reform. ¡°Britain, she is suffering. She is not well.¡±

The defection increases to eight the tally of Reform¡¯s lawmakers in the House of Commons. Braverman is the fourth former Cabinet minister to join the insurgent party after former Conservative leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi, and Jake Berry, the party¡¯s former chair.

Although Braverman was high on the list of those suspected to shift their allegiance, her exit adds to the existential challenge that Reform poses to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and the official opposition party. Farage¡¯s party is about 7 percentage points clear of the Tories in the polls.

While Farage has said he¡¯s seeking to recruit qualified politicians to Reform, the Tory influx has also opened him up to the charge that he¡¯s filling his party with members of the unpopular former administration. Braverman¡¯s entry brings the number of members of former Prime Minister Liz Truss¡¯ Cabinet who are now with Reform to four.

The Conservative Party dismissed Braverman¡¯s move as driven by ¡°personal ambition¡± and joked that Farage was doing the Tories¡¯ ¡°spring cleaning¡± for them. ¡°It was always a matter of when, not if, Suella would defect,¡± they said in a statement.

Labour Party Chair Anna Turley similarly criticized Reform for taking on the former Conservative ministers. ¡°Nigel Farage is stuffing his party full of the failed Tories responsible for the chaos and decline that held Britain back for 14 years,¡± she said.

Braverman, member of parliament for Fareham and Waterlooville, served as home secretary under both Truss and Rishi Sunak, who dismissed her in November 2023, a week after she wrote an op-ed in the Times suggesting police were treating Palestinian protesters more lightly than right-leaning nationalists. She stood for the Conservative leadership in July 2022, calling for the U.K. to leave the European Court of Human Rights, cut taxes and suspend the country¡¯s net-zero target.

Net migration ¡ª a priority of Braverman¡¯s as home secretary ¡ª stood at 685,000 for 2023 while the plan to process asylum claims in Rwanda failed to achieve any of the involuntary deportations it was set up for.