Keith Prince went from a Conservative member of nearly 50 years to a Reform defector on the London Assembly before also becoming Havering Council Leader
It was only a year ago that Keith Prince was approaching five decades as a card-carrying Conservative.
Having first won an elected position in 1990, the East Londoner had seen party leaders from Margaret Thatcher to Rishi Sunak come and go. But with an insurgent Reform UK on the rise, it was now or never for Mr Prince to jump ship.
On the eve of last year’s Conservative conference, he was pictured shaking hands with Nigel Farage as he became the latest in a series of high profile political figures to abandon the Tories.
“I prefer to call it upgrading really rather than defection,” Mr Prince told MyLondon’s forthcoming podcast The London Brief.
“It wasn’t a decision I took lightly. After all, I’d been in the Conservative Party for 49 years. When I joined the Conservatives, we had a really dynamic leader – Margaret Thatcher, with a vision for the country.
“I just felt that over the years the party lost its way, and it was no longer inspiring or something that people could actually get on with.
“So I looked around and there you had a very charismatic leader in Nigel Farage with a vision, and I felt the only way that I could really help my country was by joining Reform, so that we could get stuff done, and really repair the mess that’s been made by consecutive governments.”
The Conservative Party were in government for much of Mr Prince’s time as a member, though that included some tumultuous periods in the early part of the decade when Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were ousted by backbenchers before Mr Sunak called an election which would see the party go into opposition for the first time since 2010.
Kemi Badenoch, who took the mantle shortly after Mr Sunak stepped down in 2024, has stabilised the party but has failed to make significant headroom in the polls, either in London or nationally.
Mr Prince says he has “nothing personal” against Ms Badenoch and considers her a “friend” – but insists the party has “lost its way” and that last year felt like the right time to defect.
Several months after the decision, he won one of 39 seats Reform UK would take on Havering Council – and end up the leader of the party’s first ever London local authority.
Though he describes the position as a “blessing” and says it’s a chance to “make a real difference” in the place he grew up, Westminster may be the next step up for Mr Prince, should the party continue its upward momentum in the polls.
Nationally, polling shows Reform in first place or just behind Labour, indicating they will significantly increase their current eight MPs into at least three figures.
Despite the Prime Minister’s claims otherwise, a snap election is still understood to be possible in the coming months, with opposition parties readying themselves for an announcement.
Making the jump from City Hall to Westminster is a well-trodden path, but Mr Prince says giving up what he has would be a “real strain”.
“It’s been an unbelievably amazing journey for me,” he said. “When I joined Reform, I thought I’d be a London Assembly Member, I thought I might be reselected as a councillor for Havering Council.
“This time last year, I couldn’t have even imagined that [being the leader] would have happened. Possibly, and I’m not saying I will, but there’s a possibility that I might put my name forward for Parliament.
“It’s something I have to think about. I just love being leader of Havering Council. I love being a GLA man, but in the GLA, I represent Havering and Redbridge.
“Havering is where I was born, raised, educated, Redbridge is where my children were born, raised, and educated, so I have a real affinity with both boroughs. I am, actually, Mr Havering and Redbridge. So to not do that would be a real, real strain for me.
“Being leader of Havering, my home borough, you know, and actually having the power to make a difference in that borough, doing the right things for the people – that’s just a blessing, that really is.
“Being an MP is great, I guess, but you don’t have the power that a leader of a council has if you’re a backbencher. And I’m probably too old now to make the cabinet, whereas in my borough, I’m running the cabinet. So that’s a tough decision that I’ll have to make. But I don’t know – I’ll see how that goes.”
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