There comes a moment for many soldiers – and most politicians – when you realise the battle you think you’re fighting isn’t the one your leaders are waging. That moment came for me watching Kemi Badenoch tell Sky News’s Trevor Phillips there are real differences between Reform UK and the Conservatives. She was right. The difference is the Reform leadership – voters grasp the scale of our national peril and back a party serious about addressing it.
I didn’t leave the Conservative party, it left me
Many in Britain feel we may already have passed the point of no return. Our cities grow less cohesive, the country effectively bankrupt.
For over a year, Conservative colleagues have insisted Reform was just a noisy protest vehicle. ‘We’re all saying the same things,’ they claimed. But we’re not. Kemi was correct: the differences are real – and it’s those differences that brought me, with regret but clarity, to conclude I am no longer a Conservative. I remain a conservative – as do millions of voters – but our values now align more with Reform.
This isn’t hard when the government I supported presided over the arrival of well over four million mostly unskilled migrants and their dependents. You can’t blame people for wanting better for their families – but you can blame a government, my government, for allowing 728,000 net arrivals in a single year. The army has 33 infantry battalions; since 2018, we’ve let in nearly 250 battalions’ worth of undocumented young men of military age. And it was the Conservatives who launched the well-meant but job-exporting Net Zero agenda, pushing UK energy prices to four times those in the US.
Now the Conservatives offer cautious reform: modest tax cuts, a managed Net Zero transition, an inquiry into the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights). Reform offers a sharper reset: immediate tax cuts, hard borders, and a clear-out of ideologically captured institutions. One wants course correction. The other believes only bold change can restore public trust.
The Conservative party I thought I joined believed in sovereignty, secure borders, low taxes, personal responsibility, and cultural confidence. That party is no longer in government – and no longer deserves to be.
It wasn’t just defeated at the ballot box – it was hollowed out by careerists masquerading as conservatives. They got there thanks to CCHQ’s obsession with the divisive dogma of ‘diversity, equality, and inclusion’ (DEI) over merit and sense. A government elected on promises of control and competence delivered drift, disillusionment, and denial.
Reform’s policies are not extreme. Some of my former media colleagues smear them as such. They should look to themselves. As a Sikh friend said: Reform is refreshingly colour-blind. Its platform is what the Conservative manifesto should have been: tax and regulatory reform, full border control, energy sovereignty, making Brexit work, restoring national pride, and the first duty of government – protecting the public.
When I talk to people in Gravesham in Kent, the seat I served for 19 years, they don’t bring up DEI or Net Zero. They talk about the boats. About crime, housing, doctors, bills, and broken services. And the quiet anger at seeing economic migrants in hotels seemingly prioritised over British citizens — including homeless veterans. They see a system that punishes effort and rewards dependency. This is not ideology. It is betrayal.
A former cabinet minister friend recently said: ‘Reform may win many more seats — and just split the vote again.’ But that misses the point. The vote is already split. For millions, the Conservative party stopped being a conservative vehicle long before it was thrown out of office.
Reform has taken up that mantle – and wears it with pride. ‘They’re the only party speaking common sense,’ a local Reform supporter told me. ‘The Tories became Labour-lite.’ He’s not wrong: think Chagos, woke policy drift, tax hikes, and the slow purge of the wealth creators who fund the system.
From the refusal to cut migration, to cowardice in confronting public-sector radicals, to the erosion of free speech, the Conservatives chose to manage decline, not resist it.
Labour, of course, is worse – not just timid but dangerous. Their instinct is always for more state, more spending, more control. The Conservatives at least hesitated before doing harm. Labour doesn’t even pause. We cannot hand them another blank cheque in 2029 because the so-called Right remains divided.
This is no time for technocrats or those who simply fancy being Prime Minister. It requires conviction. Kemi is a fighter – but she’s surrounded by too many who’d be Lib Dems if the Lib Dems were winning. She can’t charge from a trench full of MPs who won’t follow her.
I joined the Army to serve the country, not the institution. The same applies now. If we want to rescue Britain, we must be honest about who’s still willing to fight for her. Reform is not perfect – but it is serious.
I didn’t leave the Conservative party, it left me. It used good people’s votes to govern as Labour-lite and squabble over promotions. In doing so, it handed Britain to an ignorant and disastrous Labour government.
Some may say I’ve moved to Reform because it may win my old seat. Of course, that’s a consideration. But it’s not the reason. I know the road from protest to power is long. Reform may flare bright and fade. It must grow beyond its extraordinary founder, lose some of its more combative edges, continue to attract serious talent, further professionalise, and develop to become a credible government-in-waiting. That will require discipline, time, and luck to challenge the deep vested interests in Parliament, the civil service, the unions, and the wider public sector.
No: I’ve made this choice not because it’s easy or inevitable, but because right-thinking people need to come together.
As Ronald Reagan said, ‘You gotta dance with the one that brung ya.’ The Conservative party forgot to dance with the people who brought it to power. The challenge for Reform – and any future allies – is to become fully fit and credible for the rescue mission of 2029, which may well be the United Kingdom’s last best chance.
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