A rumour rumbled through the Westminster bubble this weekend, via a story in the Daily Mail, that Kemi Badenoch is planning a reshuffle, to remove some “dead wood” from the shadow cabinet and to promote some of her younger rising stars.

The suggestion was that shadow home office minister Katie Lam, a new ConservativeHome columnist, was to be ‘bought off’ with a promotion because she was on ‘defection watch’

Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary was on the TV to dismiss the story, which made reasonable sense not just because he, Mel Stride and Priti Patel were named in the article as being ‘at risk.’ The story has been hard to stand up.

As you’d expect we’ve dug a bit deeper. Sometimes an off the record chat about things a ‘party insider’ would like to happen, are written up and reported as things that will happen. It’s always been part of the nature of political reporting. I can only say, without offending our readers that the Leader of the Opposition’s aides gave me their reaction to the entire story. It rhymed with ‘concrete rollocks‘.

Having been mislead, as many were, by Robert Jenrick’s plans for the future before he was sacked and left, we did some checking. Suffice to say a number of people responded. Katie Lam believes the story to be a fabrication and had had no conversations about any of it. Friends went further to point out she has consistently said that she’s no fan of ambition over disloyalty. A point that has been echoed by a number of one time supporters of Jenrick who’ve told me they still feel astonishingly let down by him.

Members however have their own views on what the defections of Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman, and Andrew Rosindell have had on the Conservative Party, given their move to Reform UK, a party still consistently ahead in the polls.

Only four per cent more of them think the defections have strengthened the party, at 33.7 per cent. A further 16.3% think the defections have strengthened both parties. That signals something the party should already know: There are a significant – and not to be discounted – number of party members who are still waiting and watching to  see what happens with either party, before they chose who might ultimately get their backing.

The 29.4 per cent of members who think the defections have weakened the party are not entirely a surprise either. Remember at the New Year, though Kemi badenoch was voted our Conservative Politician of 2025 (before Jenrick was sacked), Jenrick was voted shadow cabinet member of the year (Badenoch not included) and Suella Braverman our Backbencher of the year.  ConservativeHome itself does not have a vote. It’s not just the 29 percent, but note the 14.2 percent who think the defections have weakened both parties. More one suspects a reflection of those who think that Reform’s appeal will suffer from being largely former Tories at the top, and yet those that left had views and skills they think the party needed.

So do they think there will be more senior defections? Yes.

43.7 per cent said it was likely and 12 per cent highly likely. Which begs the question of those 57 per cent who exactly do think it might be? The Daily Mail may have a view, but this survey does not give clues to that. Nor does it specify whether amongst those responders who think it likely or highly likely, there are those who wish it to happen. A scenario the leadership should at least hold in their mind.

It may also be a projection of timings. Many a senior Tory has told me of plausible scenarios that might unfold if Reform stay far enough out in front and Tory polling stays stubbornly where it is. Not inevitable by any means but neither to be dismissed. One of those scenarios is that Conservative MPs who start to think that situation will stay as it is until 2029 might just jump at a later date. Farage might say he has this ‘cut off date’, but I’d discount that. He does, for now.

There’s also a reason I’d be suspicious of a new set of defections right now. The biggest criticism aimed at Reform and Farage personally is his closeness to Donald Trump – who won’t be President in 2029 – and Labour have been falling over themselves to suggest anyone criticising their woeful vacillation over defensive planning and spending is just “a war monger who supports Trump and illegal wars”

There’s a reason for that. They desperately want to persuade the public to view the Conservatives and Reform as ‘Trump’s poodles’. Their social media outriders use suspiciously similar phrases and lines to that effect. It is the counter punch to them knowing their military and diplomatic posture hides their fear that many of their own voters will defect to the Greens if they don’t try to show they are more anti-Trump and anti-Israel.

We’ll test this defection question again, once the May elections are over.

Alexander Bowen is a trainee economist based in Belgium, specialising in public policy assessment, and a policy fellow at a British think tank.

Britain’s foreign policy has been defined, or at least surmised, by famous phrases; Palmerston’s classic lines, the first rendered briefly that “Britain has no eternal allies, only eternal interests”, the second “Civis Romanus sum” (used to justify blockading Greece). Go on further and there are Churchill’s “three majestic circles” – that Britain must sit between Europe, America, and its Empire, to find its place in the post-war world.

Further still, to 2001 and to today, and you find a foreign policy defined by Blair’s Conference Speech that “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken”, that Britain must “re-order this world around us”, and that “the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause”. Twenty five years on we are living in that speech’s foreign policy, but not in that speech’s world even if shadows remain in our collective cave.

In this spirit then I would like to offer here a new phrase, not one that defines our foreign policy, but one that ought to. “Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy” – not my circus, not my monkeys. It’s a charming Polish idiom meaning, bluntly, not my problem.

Now this is not a call for reviving Splendid Isolation nor going down some Swiss or Irish path, but it is asking people to acknowledge what was once a basic reality. That the purpose of a state is to serve the interests of its citizens and decisions ought to be taken through that framework. Is an intervention in our national interest? Does it benefit Britain and its people?

Yet what we appear to have been left with is a foreign policy that regardless of who is in charge fails to ask that basic question – a left whose only question is whether something has been approved by the UN, a standard to which two and a half countries hold themselves to, and a right, exemplified best by Richard Tice, who simply asks how high must we jump when the Americans call.

Iran is bluntly case in point.

The Telegraph has, correctly, characterised the regime as evil and a global sponsor of terror, arguing that Britain must bomb yet it has been unable to articulate any actually substantive reason for participation only that Britain would be left as a “footnote as history unfolds around us”. What we are left with then is this: that Britain must spend its money, of which we have too little, and put military personnel, of which we have few, in harm’s way so that in, 15 or 20 years’ time, “Britain sent 2 fighter jets to the Middle East” gets to be in brackets in the body of the text.

The quid-pro-quo argument advanced by some at least offers a genuine attempt to argue that participation is in the national interest – that failure to help the Americans now means they might fail to help us with the Falklands, or some other hypothesised conflict where Britain’s national interest is actually at stake, yet it falls apart at the most basic level of reality. We already had a war over the Falklands, and one that happened when both British and American leaders and national interests have never been closer, in which the Americans did substantively zero to assist. Are we really to believe then that Trump today, having choked off Ukraine, or some fictional ‘decolonising’ Democrat will ride to our rescue because in 2026 Britain shot down seven drones?

Much of the right has correctly criticised soft power – that as wonderful as Downton Abbey is, a nation projects its strength through its ships not its TV Butlers – but it has failed to appreciate that symbolic hard power is just soft power with a squint and the deployments being demanded are very much symbols alone. This is not to say there is no place for symbols, far from it, but symbols for symbols sake is ultimately the kind of logic that gets you Bolivia ratifying the Treaty of Versailles or landlocked Paraguay declaring war on Nazi Germany and it looks, particularly as the symbols border on the irrelevant, increasingly ridiculous.

We must ask ourselves then what constitutes our circus and who are our monkeys? Europe? Certainly, we do share a continent and a destiny. The North Atlantic? Certainly, it is the Ocean upon which our existence depends. The South Atlantic? More or less, some 10,000 Brits do live there on islands they first settled and on land still administered by Britain. Dubai? Afghanistan? Israel? Ethiopia? I am yet to be convinced.

Do we share their values? I doubt it very much. Is our security on an island 4,000 miles away really dependent on theirs? I doubt it very much. Are our domestic challenges on illegal migration or energy aided by bombing a country with a hundred million people and the fourth largest oil reserves? I doubt it very much. We have seen perfectly well what believing that fighter jets are the solution for prices at the pump looks like, and it looks like believing the Mongols are the solution to climate change. It is inane.

All I ask then is this – that before we start shooting, that the people demanding it concretely and rationally explain how it benefits Britain and what our value add is. No vagaries about protest suppression or jailing journalists for, as terrible as both are, Iran is not our circus.

Cllr Nick McLean is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Merton Council

The London Borough of Merton has much to be proud of. It has a world-class sporting heritage, international recognition, and some of the finest green spaces in the capital. Yet today it is run by a tired, complacent, and increasingly unpopular Labour administration.

Across Merton, frustration is growing – and rightly so. Council Tax is high due to the ruling Labour administration’s maximum increases over recent years. Residents are paying more year after year, yet they are seeing declining services, deteriorating streets, and a council increasingly distracted by ideology rather than delivery.

This is not an isolated local problem. It reflects the same failing Labour mindset we see across London and in Westminster. From Sadiq Khan’s endlessly rising mayoral precept added to Council Tax bills, to Labour’s national tax-and-spend instincts, families and businesses are being squeezed harder while value for money disappears. Labour’s answer to every challenge is always the same: tax more, spend more, and blame someone else when it doesn’t work.

This cycle of Council Tax rises and worsening services will be exacerbated in future due to the Fair Funding Review cutting £13.4 million from Merton’s grant funding over the next few years.

And the Liberal Democrats? They offer no solution, because they fundamentally agree with Labour on the big issues.

The Lib Dems backed Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ expansion without hesitation and refused to support previous Conservative proposals for a Council Tax rebate to help struggling residents. When Conservative councillors challenged the council’s budget – asking basic, responsible questions about costs, productivity, and benefits to taxpayers – the Lib Dems had little to contribute beyond complaints about the lack of “gender-neutral language” in council documents. While residents worry about bills, crime, and public services, the Lib Dems are focused on virtue-signalling and box-ticking.

Conservatives stand for something very different. We believe in lower taxes, efficient public services, law and order, and freedom of choice. We believe councils exist to serve residents, not to lecture them, micromanage their lives, or waste money on ideological vanity projects.

Labour’s record in Merton speaks for itself. A never-ending war on motorists that punishes working people. An attempt to block much-needed investment in our local hospital through legal action. Time, money, and effort squandered while the basics are neglected.

A council should do its job well: collect the bins, clean the streets, fix the potholes and pavements, and keep council finances under control. Beyond that, it should step back and allow individuals and families to decide how best to live their lives – with more of their own money kept in their pockets. That is the Conservative approach, and it is one that resonates strongly with Merton residents.

Merton residents are recognising that Conservative councillors focus on what really matters: reliable local services, responsible financial management, and public safety – not niche distractions or ideological posturing.

Public safety, in particular, is now a defining issue. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have presided over the downgrading of police stations, and they support policies that lead to fewer criminals behind bars. Conservatives are clear and unapologetic: we will back the police, tackle crime, and stand up for law-abiding residents. A strong Conservative presence on the council is essential if Merton is to remain a safe place to live, work, and raise a family.

It is also important to be honest about the role of Reform. Reform cannot win in Merton. Their vote share remains small, they have nothing to say on the big local issues, and the only practical effect of their presence is to risk splitting the centre-right vote, handing power to Labour and the Liberal Democrats by default.

The choice facing Merton residents could not be clearer. Labour offers the politics of envy and ever-higher taxes. The Liberal Democrats offer the politics of victimhood and virtue-signalling. The Greens offer student politics disconnected from the realities of local government. Reform offers the politics of grievance without the ability to deliver. Only the Conservatives offer hope, aspiration, competence, and common sense.

This matters not just for the next local elections, but for the long-term direction of our borough and our country. Local government is where political momentum is built, where bad ideas can be challenged, and where Conservative values can be put into practice in people’s everyday lives.

On May 7th, Merton needs a strong, confident Conservative voice on the council – one that will challenge Labour failure, expose Lib Dem opportunism, and stand up for residents who simply want a council to focus on delivering core services.

That is what Merton Conservatives are fighting for.