Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has been dealt another damaging blow as a key donor and personal adviser has defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, just as the Conservative Party conference gets underway in Manchester.
Mark Gallagher, who donated £2,000 to Ms Badenoch’s leadership campaign last October, left the Tories around two months ago and is now reportedly working with Mr Farage. The revelation emerged on Sunday, coinciding with the start of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
Mr Gallagher, founder of the award-winning PR agency Pagefield Communications, was a regular contact with the leader of the opposition’s office and served as a personal adviser to Ms Badenoch. A Tory source confirmed that Ms Badenoch sought advice from him, describing Gallagher as an “early” supporter and adviser.
‘Still Respects Kemi’ But UK Needs ‘Stronger Medicine’
Friends of Mr Gallagher told GB News that he likes and respects Ms Badenoch and still thinks she’s the best person for Tory leader, but believes the UK needs stronger medicine than the Tories are able to offer.
A Reform UK source said that Nigel and Mark have been friends for a long time, adding they understand he is very disenchanted with the Conservative Party. It is now believed that Mr Gallagher is working with Nigel Farage.
According to Sky News, one reason Mr Gallagher defected was that Ms Badenoch did not respond to repeated attempts to help and was ignoring him. The revelation has prompted sharp criticism from Conservative sources and Ms Badenoch’s team.
Conservative Response: ‘Churlish to Get Upset’
A Conservative source sought to downplay Mr Gallagher’s significance, saying the donor “flitted between parties”. However, the source was unable to deny that Mr Gallagher continued to advise Ms Badenoch after she became leader.
An aide to Ms Badenoch defended the Conservative leader, saying she gets 20 texts every minute from MPs, friends, ex-MPs, supporters, peers and people offering advice. The aide added that she endeavours to go back to everyone, but realistically she’s running the world’s oldest political party, doing media interviews, having meetings, doing visits, and being a wife and mother of three young children.
The aide continued, saying it would be churlish to get quite so upset about timely responses.
Gallagher’s Political and Business Credentials
Mark Gallagher is widely regarded as one of the leading communicators, campaigners and political lobbyists of his generation. He founded Pagefield Communications in 2010, which now employs a team of fifty communicators and has served close to 300 companies, countries, charities and extraordinary individuals as clients.
Before launching Pagefield, Mr Gallagher was Director of Corporate Affairs and Chief of Staff at Europe’s largest commercial broadcaster, ITV plc. He was the first communications director to sit on the main shareholder board of any large British company at Camelot Group plc, and served as Public Affairs Director at ITN, where he was the youngest member of the Executive Board in the company’s 50-year history.
At Pagefield, Mr Gallagher has advised companies as diverse as Airbnb, British Airways, BAT, Discovery Networks, Starling Bank and the World Economic Forum. He has also worked with clients of unique global significance, including members of the British Royal Family and the estate and family of Professor Stephen Hawking.
Influential Figure in British Politics
Mr Gallagher sat on the advisory board and working group that delivered the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, with Pagefield being the first external communications firm to deliver PR for a major Royal event. He has served as a Trustee of the Museum Association, spent two terms as a Commissioner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, and has been on the external advisory group of His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He was the only consultant to be included in the top 50 of Iain Dale’s most politically influential people in the UK. Mr Gallagher has appeared annually in Bloomsbury’s Who’s Who since 2017 and the PRWeek Power Book for more than a decade, where he has also been listed amongst Britain’s top ten public affairs campaigners for many years.
Mr Gallagher has featured several times in the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000, which lists London’s top one thousand most influential people.
Latest in Series of Defections
The defection adds to a growing list of Conservative figures who have switched to Reform UK in recent months. In September, sitting Tory MP Danny Kruger became the first current Conservative MP to defect to Reform while claiming his former party was “over”.
Former Minister for Health Maria Caulfield also joined Reform UK around the same time, telling GB News that if you are conservative right-minded, then the future is Reform, adding the country is going to change a lot.
On Saturday, veteran London Assembly member Keith Prince, who had been a Conservative for nearly 50 years, defected to Reform UK, giving Mr Farage’s party official group status at City Hall for the first time.
Badenoch’s ECHR Announcement
The defection comes as Ms Badenoch uses the Conservative Party conference to commit to withdrawing the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights if her party wins the next general election. The Tory leader has warned that a failure to control Britain’s borders has pushed the country to “breaking point”.
She claims her party offers a vision of “authentic conservatism”, describing Reform UK’s Nigel Farage as a “one-man band” who offered a “pastiche” of Tory values.
Ms Badenoch said the country is getting to breaking point because borders are not being controlled and people are unhappy, adding that if you cannot deliver the basics for your people because of a convention which is out of your control, then you should leave.
Electoral Record Context
Ms Badenoch won the Tory leadership contest in October 2024, succeeding former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. However, under her leadership, the Conservatives suffered significant losses in the May 2025 local elections, losing about two-thirds of the council seats held.
All 16 councils where the Conservatives had a majority were lost to Reform UK or the Liberal Democrats, or no party achieved a majority. Ms Badenoch apologised to all unseated councillors, describing the result as “a bloodbath”.
In the 2025 Runcorn and Helsby by-election for a seat in Parliament, held on the same day as the local elections, the Conservative Party won just 7% of the vote, coming third behind Reform and Labour, who were tied on 39% each.
Reform UK announced in September 2025 that it had reached 250,000 paid-up members, more than double that of the Conservatives at 123,000 members.
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Image Credit:
Kemi Badenoch — photo from official Cabinet 2024, licensed under CC BY 4.0
