07/10/2026
Exactly right 👏🏻👏🏻
Today the Conservatives will finish their conference. It is the first Tory Conference in more than 30 years that I have watched as a non-member. Like many of you, I clung on to the Conservative Party for far too long. Beyond all reason, I kept believing they would change.
The other day, I compared my relationship with the Conservatives to a spouse who keeps cheating on you and breaking your heart. Naively, every time, I took them back and told myself: “This time will be different.” But it never was and it never will be.
Yesterday, Kemi Badenoch said that the Conservative Cabinet in which she and I served did not notice the immigration problem. She said: “There were so many other things people were focusing on, so Ministers did not notice.”
Well, I noticed. You noticed. The whole country noticed.
When I walked into the Home Office in 2022, the situation was a disaster. Visas were out of control. The Boriswave, unleashed by the very people we had trusted in 2019 to take back control of our borders, was in full swing. The British people had been betrayed.
Time and again — in 2010, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 — millions of people voted for lower immigration and greater control over our borders. What did they get? The opposite.
I tried to fight back and, to be fair, there were civil servants in Whitehall who were up for the fight too. By the end of my tenure, we had secured changes that were beginning to work. But much of the damage had already been done.
That was the fundamental problem with the Conservative Party. They would tell the electorate one thing and say something completely different behind closed doors. Publicly, they promised lower immigration. Privately, I heard: “Oh Suella, we can’t lower immigration. Just think of the economy.” I have seen the Conservative Party up close. These people were my political family. Many were my friends.
But they betrayed me. More importantly, they betrayed you — and the millions of people who voted for controlled immigration, secure borders, safer streets and a government that put the British people first.
Perhaps nothing sums up my former party better than what happened when I finally left. On the very day I resigned from the Conservatives, people within the party resorted to a totally fabricated smear about my mental health in an attempt to discredit me and damage the movement I had joined. After three decades of loyalty, that was their response.
There is an old lesson in life: when someone finally shows you who they are, believe them. I finally have.
But I don't want to end on the past. I want to look to the future. Joining Reform — apart from marrying my husband and having our children — was one of the best decisions of my life.
For the first time in years, I feel politically at home. I feel hopeful again. I am surrounded by people who love our country, believe in its future and are determined to fight for it.
We cannot change what the Conservatives did with the trust that millions of us placed in them. But we can decide what happens next.
We can rebuild our borders. We can make our streets safe. We can restore pride in our country. We can put British families first and we can give people something that has been missing from our politics for far too long: hope.
That is why I joined Reform. At the next election, every voter will have their own choice to make about the future they want for Britain. For me, that future is Reform.
The old chapter is closed. Now it is time to build something better.
