Former Conservative minister Nadine Dorries has defected to Reform UK – the latest in a long list of right-wing moves.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, the former culture secretary claimed “the Tory party is dead”.

She said: “Its members now need to think the unthinkable and look to the future.”

It came on the eve of Reform UK’s conference, and it is expected she will open the proceedings with a speech.

The Conservative Party said: “We wish Nadine well.”

Meanwhile, a former aide to Dorries said simply: “Good riddance.”

And the Liberal Democrats said: “We don’t know who to feel more sorry for, Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage.”

Dorries defection: ‘She doesn’t strike me as the future of British politics,’ says minister

Former cabinet minister and sidekick to Boris Johnson, Nadine Dorries, announced last night that she is defecting to Reform UK.

Our presenter Anna Jones asked Labour minister Douglas Alexander for his reaction, and he replied: “Nadine Dorries doesn’t really strike me as the future of British politics. Leopards don’t tend to change their spots.

And in that sense, what it confirms to me is it’s the same old Tories flying under a different flag. You know, if it walks like a duck, it talks like a duck, it quacks like a duck – tends to be a duck.

“And in that sense, Reform are trying to see where something fundamentally different, but Nadine Dorries is indelibly associated with the chaos, the decline and the problems that we are spending every waking day trying to clean up.

“So in that sense, I think it’s more of a challenge for Reform than a benefit for Reform to be so associated with the abject record of failure of the government of which Nadine Dawes was part.”