LONDON — Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman defected to Reform UK Monday becoming the fourth sitting Tory MP to join Nigel Farage’s party since the last election.

Braverman, who served as the U.K.’s chief interior minister between 2022 and 2023, told an audience of war veterans at a Reform UK event: “I feel like I’ve come home.”

Her departure, which caught Westminster by surprise, is a blow to Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch ahead of crucial local elections across England and the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales in May.

The MP for Fareham and Waterlooville follows former Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick and veteran right-winger Andrew Rosindell in joining Nigel Farage’s populist force just this month. Danny Kruger moved over to Reform last September.

“Today Britain is indeed broken. She is suffering. She is not well,” Braverman said, echoing rhetoric used by Jenrick in his defection speech.

“We stand at a crossroads. We can either continue down this route of managed decline to weakness and surrender. Or we can fix our country, reclaim our power, rediscover our strength. I believe that a better Britain is possible,” she said.

Reform UK will now have eight MPs sitting in the House of Commons.

Braverman, who had been one of the Conservatives most right wing MPs, ran unsuccessfully to lead the Conservatives in 2022 after Boris Johnson’s resignation as prime minister.

This developing story is being updated.