You cannot have it both ways. If we need to make sure that we have enough experience in Reform to be the next government, then, by definition, we need to take those who have it.
As I wrote on my Substack this week, that is pretty elementary. Therefore, those who are becoming concerned that we are taking too many Tory MPs are effectively saying that we should not be looking for experience.
Furthermore, the more currently serving MPs we take, the more our own parliamentary ranks swell and the harder it is for us to be denied the usual courtesies for opposition parties.
Next year, for example, Nigel Farage will be laying a wreath at the Cenotaph because we have reached ( and surpassed) the qualifying number of six MPs.
That is not to say that Reform should take anybody and everybody from the declining Conservative ranks, and we don’t. I am in two minds about the deadline of May 7th simply because I believe that, with three years still to go, there will be suitable people wanting to come over.
Neither Jacob Rees-Mogg nor Mark Francois is prepared to defect, but if either was I imagine we would put out the bunting even if it were a mere week before the General Election.
If these two Tories defect, Reform can put out the bunting even before the election - Ann Widdecombe | Getty Images
What is important is that we take only those with a proven track record of sharing our values, including those who may have started in a different place and then went on a journey.
The reason that I have so consistently opposed any deal with Badenoch is that the Tory Party is stuffed full of neo-liberal wets, and I don’t want them within a mile of us.
Unite the Right is a meaningless slogan precisely because too many in the parliamentary ranks of the Tory Party are not right.
Nevertheless, we do need a few prominent Labour defections. The promise of one to come this week has started a great deal of speculation: Kate Hoey? Gisela Stuart? John Mann?
Indeed, this week, when I saw that Jack Straw had signed a statement that it was quite possible for the UK to leave ECHR without the legal complexities forecast by many, I had a wild notion that it might be him!
This speculation has been useful because it gets home the message that there are plenty of potential recruits from Labour and that Reform is not just the Tory party in different packaging.
I happened to see Andrew Rossindell just a few days before his defection. I was sitting in the House of Commons central lobby waiting to see Danny Kruger when he, Andrew, passed by. I asked him when he was going to join us, and he demurred and then distracted me by talking about a mutual friend.
Inevitably, people are talking about Zahawi and Jenrick and rightly so because they bring the experience, but it is my belief that the quieter defection of Rossindell is more significant because he is a typical right-winger who hitherto has hesitated to give up on the Party which brought him to Parliament.
His example will perhaps make others like him who are standing looking at the Rubicon find the courage to cross it.