Reform UK’s latest defector Nadine Dorries – former pro-Brexit Conservative, I’m a Celebrity alumna and self-appointed scourge of the shadowy deep state – was paraded about the party’s annual conference in Birmingham like a homecoming queen.

Fireworks marked Dorries’s stage entrance. Part of her speech – in which the former Cabinet minister declared that “the Tories are dead” – was greeted with a rare cheer. But the rest of her dreary analysis of an economy teetering on the brink didn’t land well. “Apologies, I didn’t exactly pump up the audience,” Dorries mumbled upon leaving the stage, saved by an awkward hug from party leader Nigel Farage.

Offstage there were reservations that she should have been accepted at all. Reform purists were worried: how many defections from the Tories would tip their shiny emerging brand into something else entirely, they wondered. Having spent years attacking the last failed Tory administration, isn’t it time to say no to more defections? When does the Reform dinghy accepting Tory migrants become at risk of sinking?

At the conference, Joanne Morton, 55, who works in sales for an oil firm, sported a red “Make Britain Great Again” cap. The chairman of the party’s Bassetlaw branch in Nottinghamshire said admittance to Reform should be only on a “case by case basis”.

Bassetlaw’s local association welcomed two district councillors from the Tories who have “moulded well” to the existing team and “have really helped........

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