Long-serving ex-Tory MP Adam Holloway joins Reform
Adam Holloway, who represented Gravesham in Kent between 2005 and 2024, said on Wednesday he had become the latest ex-MP to join Nigel Farage's party.
The 59-year-old former Army officer said: 'There comes a moment for many soldiers – and most politicians – when you realise the battle you think you're fighting isn't the one your leaders are waging.
'That moment came for me watching Kemi Badenoch tell Trevor Phillips there are real differences between Reform UK and the Conservatives. She was right.
'The difference is the Reform leadership and voters grasp the scale of our national peril and back a party serious about addressing it.'
Mr Holloway is at least the eighth former Tory MP to have joined Reform since the last election, following former party chairman Sir Jake Berry, former Wales secretary David Jones and Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who won the Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty for the party in May.
Having served in the Grenadier Guards for five years, including during the Gulf War, Mr Holloway worked as a journalist for ITV and ITN before his election to Parliament in 2005.
A strong supporter of Brexit, he was briefly a whip under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and was one of six Tory MPs to vote against censuring Mr Johnson after he was found to have misled the Commons over the Partygate scandal.
He was himself reprimanded by Parliament's standards watchdog after improperly attempting to prevent the release of a character reference he had provided for former Tory colleague Charlie Elphicke, who was jailed for two years in 2020 for sexual assault.
He lost his seat in last year's general election, falling 2,712 votes behind Labour's Lauren Sullivan.
During the campaign, he told voters that backing Reform was 'effectively taking a vote from me' and 'helping Labour'.
Mr Farage said he was 'delighted' to welcome Mr Holloway to the party, saying his parliamentary and military experience would be 'vital' ahead of the next election.
He added: 'His bold move shows that we are the only serious option in Kent and is testament to the fantastic work our councillors are delivering across the region.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
40 minutes ago
- BBC News
Government pledges extra £100m funding to tackle people smuggling
The Home Office has announced £100m in extra funding as part of efforts to crack down on illegal people smuggling in the English money will pay for up to 300 additional National Crime Agency (NCA) officers as well as new technology and than 25,000 people made the journey from France to the UK in small boats before the end of July, a record for this point in the Secretary Yvette Cooper said the move would help the UK better "track the [smuggling] gangs and bring them down". The Conservative Party called it a "desperate grab for headlines which will make no real difference". Last month, the government agreed a "one in, one out" pilot scheme with France which aims to deter migrants from crossing the Channel. Under the scheme, some arrivals would be returned to France and in exchange the UK would accept an equivalent number of asylum seekers, subject to security to the Home Office, the new £100m will boost border security and strengthen investigations targeting smuggling kingpins who have operations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Cooper said gangs had shown a "a ruthless ability to adapt their tactics and maximise their profits, no matter how many lives they put at risk".The NCA has 91 ongoing investigations into people-smuggling networks affecting the UK, the agency's director general of operations Rob Jones said. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp accused Labour of having "no serious plan" to tackle the issue."The British public deserves real action, not empty slogans and tinkering at the edges," he in the Daily Express, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said it was an effort to "throw taxpayer money at the illegal immigration crisis and hope it will go away"."Another £100 million here or there won't move the needle. It won't stop the boats or the gangs," he and previous Conservative governments have both struggled to reduce the number of people coming to the UK illegally in small Conservatives had proposed sending arrivals to Rwanda, but the scheme was delayed by legal challenges. The general election was called before it could be of Sir Keir Starmer's first acts as prime minister was to scrap the plan, calling it a another measure, which was revealed on Sunday, people advertising illegal Channel crossings online could face up to five years in prison under a new offence the government plans to illegal immigration to the UK is already a crime, but officials believe the new offence would give police and other agencies more power to disrupt criminal would criminalise the creation of material for publication online which promotes or offers services that facilitate a breach of UK immigration would include people using social media to advertise fake passports or visas, or the promise of illegal work opportunities in the UK, and as well as jail time could carry a large fine.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
STEPHEN GLOVER: Starmer is signing his political death warrant with his futile ‘smash the gangs' policy. Deterrence is the only solution
Why are Sir Keir Starmer and Labour unable to reduce the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats? Last week, as Vice-President J.D. Vance accused Europe of 'engaging in civilisational suicide', our Government established a bleak record. More than 25,000 migrants have come across the Channel so far this year, a 50 per cent increase on 2024. It seems certain that 2025 will be the worst year ever.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
UK pornography taskforce to propose banning ‘barely legal' content after Channel 4 documentary airs
The new pornography taskforce will propose legislation this autumn aimed at banning a type of 'barely legal' content produced by the porn star Bonnie Blue, the Guardian has learned. The proposed action by the independent pornography taskforce, launched last month by the Conservative peer Gabby Bertin, comes in response to the broadcast of the Channel 4 documentary 1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story. The programme followed the performer for six months and included her claim to have had sex with 1,057 clients over the course of 12 hours. Visa and Smirnoff are among a number of businesses that have pulled online advertisements from streaming of the documentary, after reviewing the content. The film was condemned by the children's commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, for 'glamorising and normalising' extreme pornography. The documentary also includes footage of Tia Billinger, whose stage name is Bonnie Blue, in a classroom preparing to film an orgy with a group of models dressed in school uniform; the performers acknowledge that they have been selected because they look very young. Lady Bertin said she planned to lodge amendments to the crime and policing bill in the autumn to make it illegal for online platforms to host any content that could encourage child sexual abuse, including pornography filmed by adults dressed as children. 'This content is pushing at the boundaries. We will be trying to address the 'barely legal' aspect legislatively,' she said. The Online Safety Act charged the regulator Ofcom with monitoring whether pornography sites are protecting UK viewers from encountering illegal material involving child sexual abuse and extreme content, such as portrayals of rape, bestiality and necrophilia. However, other forms of harmful pornography that are regulated offline (in cinemas, for example) are not subject to similar restrictions online. This regulatory anomaly means adults role-playing as children to create pornography that appears close to child sexual abuse imagery is not prohibited online. The Channel 4 documentary only showed preparations for the classroom scene rather than the footage itself. Clips showing Bonnie Blue having sex with more than 1,000 men were pixellated, but the programme has still been widely criticised for promoting her brand and for failing to challenge adequately her assertion that her activity is harmless. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Bertin said the documentary would be on the agenda at the taskforce's next meeting. 'She has become extremely successful; she is an adult and it is consensual, so it may not be harming her, but it has potentially harmful effects on people who think that this is a normal way to behave,' she said. 'We should be asking more about the men who arrive with balaclavas on their head to have sex with her.' De Souza said: 'For years we have been fighting to protect our children from the kind of degrading, violent sex that exists freely on their social media feeds. Now this documentary risks taking us a step back by glamorising, even normalising the things young people tell me are frightening. Bonnie Blue's content showcases violence against women as entertainment and allows sexist ideas that women are 'lesser' than men to go unchecked.' Visa's advertisements were placed by a third-party agency, but the company requested that they be removed from online streaming of the Channel 4 documentary after staff viewed it and judged that the content did not align with its internal guidelines. Staff at the drinks company Diageo are assessing how a Smirnoff advertisement was cleared to appear during online transmission of the show, and have also subsequently pulled their advertising from streaming of the programme. An Ofcom spokesperson said the regulator was assessing the documentary and would decide whether to launch a formal investigation. The policing minister, Diana Johnson, said last week that she would discuss the ease with which children could access the documentary on Channel 4's website with ministerial colleagues. Channel 4 requires users to be 16 to register an account, but there is no age-verification process, so children could lie about their age. A Channel 4 spokesperson said the observational film was designed to provoke debate. 'The film looks at how Bonnie Blue has gained worldwide attention and earned millions of pounds in the last year, exploring changing attitudes to sex, success, porn and feminism in an ever-evolving online world. Director Victoria Silver puts a number of challenges to Bonnie throughout the documentary on the example she sets and how she is perceived, and the film clearly lays bare the tactics and strategies she uses, with the audience purposefully left to form their own opinions.'
