Jonathan Gullis, a former Conservative Party deputy chairman, has announced he has quit the party and joined Reform UK.
The former MP for Stoke-on-Trent North and education minister had been a party member for 18 years, but said he believed the party had “lost touch with the people it was meant to serve”.
It comes one month after councillor Daniel Jellyman, the Conservative group leader on Stoke-on-Trent City Council, also defected to Reform UK and became the party’s leader on the local authority.
The BBC has approached the Staffordshire Conservatives for comment.
