List of British political defections

This is a list of notable defections or splits made by members of Parliament in the United Kingdom. They must have either been sitting MPs or MEPs at the time, or in between sessions.

1904: Winston Churchill – from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party
1920: Oswald Mosley – from the Conservative Party to Independent.
1924: Oswald Mosley – from Independent to the Labour Party
1924: Winston Churchill – formally a member of the Liberal Party, elected as a 'Constitutionalist', joined the Conservative Party
1931: Oswald Mosley – from the Labour Party to the New Party
1931: Ramsay Macdonald – from the Labour Party, established National Labour with his supporters
1962: Alan Brown – from the Labour Party to the Conservative Party
1976: John Stonehouse – from the Labour Party to the English National Party
1977: Reginald Prentice – from the Labour Party to the Conservative Party
1981: The Gang of Four: Shirley Williams, David Owen, Roy Jenkins and Bill Rodgers, from the Labour Party to form the Social Democratic Party; a total of 28 Labour and 1 Conservative MPs eventually joined
1995: Alan Howarth – from the Conservative Party to the Labour Party
1995: Emma Nicholson – from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Democrats
1997: Peter Temple-Morris – from the Conservative Party to sit as a 'One Nation Conservative; joined the Labour Party in 1998
1999: Shaun Woodward – from the Conservative Party to the Labour Party
2000: Bill Newton Dunn MEP – from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats
2001: Paul Marsden – from the Labour Party to the Liberal Democrats
2002: Andrew Hunter – from the Conservatives to being an Independent supporter of the Democratic Unionist Party (took the party whip in 2004)
2004: Jeffrey Donaldson – from the Ulster Unionist Party to the Democratic Unionist Party
2004: Robert Kilroy-Silk MEP – from the UK Independence Party to Veritas
2005: Robert V. Jackson – from the Conservative Party to the Labour Party

List of British political defections

See also