Former Conservative MP announced as Reform UK mayoral candidate

Former Conservative MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns has joined Reform UK and will run to be mayor of Lincolnshire.

Dame Andrea joined Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at a press conference where he announced her defection and said she had become the 100,000th member of his party.

She will run for the newly created role of Greater Lincolnshire Mayor in the May local elections.

Mr Farage said his party has approved more than 1,000 candidates for the elections.

The former Tory minister used a photo of Mr Farage on her election campaign leaflet earlier this year - when she was campaigning to keep her Conservative seat.

Asked how long she had been thinking about defecting, Dame Andrea said she has "always respected" Mr Farage and noted her work with Richard Tice during Brexit.

She said: "We are politically aligned. And how long have I been thinking about it? Well, I mean, I was tempted before the general election, but I am a loyal person to a party.

"I might not be loyal to prime ministers, as we've seen in the past, but I'm loyal to parties, and I believed, as I said, in going down with that ship fighting.

"I was elected as a Conservative, and I got knocked out as a Conservative, but I feel, unfortunately, the party has become tired."

Dame Andrea was a staunch supporter of Brexit and Boris Johnson.

She submitted a no-confidence letter in former prime minister Rishi Sunak last November.

As a Tory, she called for a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on whether to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Clacton MP Mr Farage said Reform UK now has more than 400 branches up and running and that the party has vetted and approved more than 1,000 candidates for the May 2026 local elections, out of 2,200 it needs.

"We put in place vetting standards far more rigorous than any political party in Britain has ever undergone before for people standing for local election," he said.

"Those candidates will be beginning to be adopted, in fact, starting at the end of this week."

Mr Farage also celebrated his personal TikTok reaching one million followers, half of which he said were under the age of 25.

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