Two senior Conservatives, former home secretary Suella Braverman and ex-Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost, are due to appear at a Reform UK press conference on Thursday alongside the party's deputy leader, Richard Tice, prompting renewed speculation they could defect to Nigel Farage's party.
Lord Frost, a Conservative peer, said he was "looking forward to joining" Braverman and Tice at the London event, which he said would "help launch Suella's important paper on leaving the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] and its implications." Tice posted on X that he would be "sharing a press conference" with Frost and Braverman and urged followers not to miss it.
Braverman, the MP for Fareham and Waterlooville, has repeatedly declined to rule out leaving the Conservative Party for Reform, telling a Telegraph podcast last week: "We can't ignore the polls. Reform is doing very well at the moment." A spokesman for Braverman did not respond to requests for comment on whether she would use Thursday's event to announce a defection.
Lord Frost has similarly left open the possibility of standing for Reform at a future general election. In May on the Planet Normal podcast he said he was "not emotionally committed" to the Conservatives and criticised the party's response to its heavy defeat at the last general election.
The planned appearance follows a recent wave of high-profile moves to Reform UK. Former Conservative culture secretary Nadine Dorries defected to Reform in recent weeks and joined Farage on stage at the party's conference in Birmingham, where Farage said additional former ministers would follow and acknowledged his party's current lack of experience at government level. Other former Conservative MPs who have joined Reform include Adam Holloway, Sir Jake Berry, Andrea Jenkyns, Marco Longhi, Ross Thomson, David Jones and Lee Anderson.
Braverman's husband, Rael Braverman, had been a member of Reform before quitting in July amid criticism of his wife's immigration policies while she served as home secretary.
Reform's gains have prompted outreach from across the conservative spectrum: former business secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has offered to advise Farage and Reform should the party win the next general election, though he has insisted he will not defect. His daughter Mary has joined Reform.
The ECHR has been a flashpoint in UK politics, with some Conservatives and Brexit-aligned figures arguing that leaving the convention would restore national control over human rights law and immigration policy. Braverman's paper, the focus of Thursday's press conference according to Lord Frost, is expected to address the legal and political consequences of such a move.
Reform's growing roster of former Conservatives adds to debate within the right-of-centre political sphere about whether an alternative to the Conservative Party can coalesce into a credible governing force. Party officials say defections bring experienced figures into Reform's ranks, while critics warn that shifts in party allegiance complicate the opposition landscape ahead of the next election.
Thursday's event will be watched for any formal announcements by Braverman or Frost and for how Reform frames the policy arguments in Braverman's paper. Both politicians have not made definitive commitments on party membership, leaving observers to assess whether the public appearance signals an imminent switch or a policy alliance short of defection.