Former British home secretary Suella Braverman has announced that she has joined Reform UK, becoming the third sitting Conservative MP to defect to Nigel Farage’s party in the space of 11 days.

Speaking at a Reform UK rally in London, Braverman told supporters that she had resigned from the Conservative Party after 30 years of membership, saying: “I feel like I’m back home.”

She said Britain is “broken” and that illegal immigration is “out of control,” adding: “We can either continue on this path of managed decline towards weakness and surrender, or we can fix our country, regain our strength, and restore our sovereignty.”

Braverman, a prominent figure on the right wing of the Conservative Party, had long been viewed as one of the MPs most likely to join Farage’s party. However, according to the BBC, the timing of her move still came as a surprise.

Farage revealed that he had been in discussions with Braverman for “a little over a year” about the possibility of her leaving the Conservatives.

An MP since 2015, Braverman served as attorney general under Boris Johnson and was appointed home secretary by Liz Truss in September 2022. She was forced to resign just a month later after it emerged that she had sent an official document to a Conservative colleague from her personal email account.

She was reinstated by Rishi Sunak six days later when he became prime minister, but was dismissed the following year after publishing an article accusing the Metropolitan Police of bias in its handling of pro-Palestinian protests in London.

With Braverman’s defection, Reform UK now has eight MPs in Parliament.