Clarification

Suella Braverman was still a Conservative MP. She is not now.

I may have missed something, which is always possible, but I had been under the impression that Suella Braverman had already left. This turns out not to be the case. She was, until recently, still a Conservative MP. She has now joined Reform. This has been described as a significant moment.

Leader of the Liz Truss Renegades

It does not feel like a surprise so much as a clarification.

Conservative politics has entered a phase where their people do not so much depart as fade. They remain present in theory, like a digital subscription you cancelled that pops up on your bank statement to remind you what an idiot you are.

Nevertheless, Braverman’s move to Reform has been greeted as a triumph. For Reform, a former Home Secretary is not merely a defection but a certificate. It says the party is no longer just a mood or a reaction but, in some sense, a vessel. The vessel may be a floating pub that has slipped its moorings, but it floats, and apparently that is an upgrade.

Somewhere just out of frame, Lee Anderson stood very still yesterday.

You do have to feel for Lee. He left early, before the last election. He took the risks. He stepped out first, took the heat, risked a defeat and endured the memes.

He must have thought that counted for something. Instead, here come Suella and Rob, prancing round the welcome stage with their cheek mics and their betrayal narratives.

A tiny part of Lee must be wondering what he has done to be reunited with Nadhim Zahawi, the only politician to have combined the role of Chancellor with an HMRC investigation into his own taxes.

This is what happens when you pioneer a bad idea, Lee. You don’t get thanked. You get overtaken.

Presiding over it all, as ever, is Nigel Farage. The impresario. Farage has been everywhere. UKIP. The European Parliament. American cable television. A jungle. Radio talk shows. Most pubs. Davos and The Russia Today YouTube channel.

And yet there is one place he has never been: Desert Island Discs. Kemi has and it’s already eating away at him. Still, the imagined playlist tells its own story. There would be Wagner, of course. And beyond the Ride of the Valkyries, for mischief, the theme tune to Love Thy Neighbour, offered with a cheeky grin and a wink. ’You couldn’t say it now.’

I’m stumped on what his luxury item would be. I can’t quite decide whether it would be a life-size poster of Donald Trump or a life-size poster of Vladimir Putin. But I do know his book would be The Dulwich College Yearbook 1976, signed by his friends.

Still, our Nigel is doing well. He is ticking off Liz Truss cabinet ministers like items in an I Spy book of people who crashed the economy and, by his own standards, has had a good week. When Liz Truss launched her budget in 2022, he hailed it as “the best Conservative budget since 1986” which is a bit odd, given that this was the budget that introduced inheritance tax. I hope the Tories will mark that moment with a 40th birthday party.

Nigel’s praise was shortly before the pound collapsed, mortgage rates spiked and Liz Truss completed her 44-day tenure.

For the Liz Truss Tories, Reform offers absolution without apology. No explanations. No admissions. Just blame the last Tory government, which they now insist they merely observed from the comfy betrayal seats around the Cabinet table.

Reform is less a political party than a witness protection programme for bad ideas.

Back at Conservative headquarters, one imagines the mood is brittle.

Kemi Badenoch must be furious. Only days ago she was triumphing on Desert Island Discs, doing what leaders are meant to do on that programme, projecting warmth and the reassuring presence of a wedding playlist. Then the music stops.

One minute you are gushing about first dances. The next you are retracting a Central Office press release that questions Suella Braverman’s mental health, which even in the days of Donald Trump was felt to be best handled off email.

And somewhere else entirely this morning, Keir is opening the papers and smiling to himself. Not Andy and Keir. Kemi and Suella. Again.