Former prisons minister Ingrid Coenradie has switched from the anti-immigration PVV to right-wing JA21, where she hopes to stand as an MP in the October general election.

Coenradie has had several public spats with PVV leader Geert Wilders and told the AD she had been looking for a new political home since the fall of the cabinet.

She said she was in touch with JA21’s Joost Eerdmans “quite quickly” after the cabinet collapsed. The two know each other from their time on Rotterdam’s city council, where Coenradie served as a councillor for Leefbaar Rotterdam, following in Eerdmans’s footsteps.

“Honestly, I was in mourning after the cabinet fell,” she said. “You feel like you’re doing good work and then someone pulls the emergency brake.”

Coenradie was also critical of Wilders, particularly over his plan to put eight prisoners in a cell to tackle overcrowding. “Totally idiotic, downright dangerous,” she said. She also dismissed his social housing rent freeze proposal as “free beer”, saying it was never a viable option.

While a minister Coenradie, who is a sexual violence survivor, put the prevention of femicide at the top of her agenda and was given an extra €10 million to spend on campaigns and a designated specialisation at the public prosecution office.