“Jonathan Gullis has joined us. We must be doing something right, said nobody ever”
LBC presenter James O’Brien has mocked former Tory MP Jonathan Gullis’ defection to Reform, saying if he were running the party he would have told colleagues not to announce Gullis had joined.
O’Brien also claimed that the departures of Gullis and Nadine Dorries show Kemi Badenoch “can’t be doing as bad a job as she appears to be doing”.
On his LBC show today, O’Brien responded to the news that Gullis, the former Tory MP for Stoke-on-Trent has joined Reform.
A Reform source has confirmed that Gullis, and two other ex-Tory MPs who lost their seats in 2024, Lia Nici and Chris Green, have also defected to Reform.
He said: “If I was running Reform, which I grant you is highly unlikely, and the message reached me that Jonathan Gullis has decided to join our ranks, I’d have put out whatever the opposite is of an APB, an all-points bulletin. I’d have put out a ban. ‘Don’t tell anyone Jonathan Gullis has joined us.’”
The presenter also suggested Gullis’ defection would be unlikely to attract others to join.
He said sarcastically: “‘Ooh Jonathan Gullis has signed up with them has he? Ooh okay then I am going to definitely throw my lot in with the racists who take bribes from Kremlin stooges. They’re my people.”
O’Brien said he wasn’t there to give advice to Nigel Farage, Reform’s chief whip Lee Anderson or any other senior Reform figure, but said: “I’d have kept that one under your hats lads.”
“Jonathan Gullis has joined us. We must be doing something right, said nobody ever,” he added.
The journalist suggested that the Tories would want the news out that Gullis had left the party.
“‘We are no longer a party in which Jonathan Gullis or Nadine Dories feel at home.’ So Kemi Badenoch can’t be doing as bad a job as she appears to be doing to the rest of us, because Nadine Dorries and Jonathan Gullis have now left,” he said.
O’Brien also unearthed a tweet Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice posted about Gullis in March 2024.
Gullis mocked Reform’s choice of candidates last year, saying it was not just putting forward a “few rotten eggs”.
The ex-Tory MP said this in response to Reform fielding candidates including a convicted animal abuser and a fortune-teller who sold spells on OnlyFans.
In a tweet, Tice sent “a special Easter message” to Gullis, stating: “Given the multiple bits of embarrassing personal information we have on you, I suggest you pipe down on your attacks on me.”
Gullis took a £10,000 donation from JCB in April 2024.
Byline Times reported that two weeks later, when JCB announced the closure of a base in his constituency and up to 200 job losses, Gullis did not comment on the news.
By contrast, when a tile factory in his constituency closed down, he was very vocal about it.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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