Sitting MP Danny Kruger quits Tories for Reform UK

Danny Kruger has become the first sitting Conservative MP to defect to Reform UK.

The East Wiltshire MP’s defection was unveiled at a press conference on Monday, where Nigel Farage said Mr Kruger would head up Reform’s efforts to prepare for Government.

Describing his move as “personally painful”, Mr Kruger condemned his former party as “over”.

He said: “We have had a year of stasis and drift and the sham unity that comes from not doing anything bold or difficult or controversial and the result is in the polls.

“And those voters aren’t coming back, and every day, more and more people are joining them in deserting the party that has failed.”

Mr Kruger’s defection marks a major blow for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, as both the first sitting Tory MP to join Reform and a member of the shadow front bench.

But he went further than merely criticising Mrs Badenoch’s leadership, suggesting that it was now “too late” to save the party even under a new leader such as Robert Jenrick, who’s bid for the party leadership Mr Kruger supported last year.

He told the press conference he had been in discussions with Reform about defecting over the summer, but had not spoken to Mrs Badenoch beforehand, instead informing Conservative chief whip Rebecca Harris on Monday morning.

Mr Kruger also urged his colleagues to join him in Mr Farage’s party, saying: “I would hope that colleagues who share my view about the crisis the country is in and the opportunity that Reform offers to save our country.”

But he added he had “no idea” if any of his parliamentary colleagues were also in discussions about joining Reform.

Responding to Mr Kruger’s defection, Mrs Badenoch herself insisted she was “not going to get blown off course by these sorts of incidents”.

Wiltshire County Council’s Conservative group leader Richard Clewer said his defection was “disappointing”, adding the party “hasn’t changed significantly from the position it went into the last election” and if anything had “got slightly more in line with Danny’s views”.

Turning to his new job, Mr Kruger said: “Our mission is not just to overthrow the current system, it is to restore the system we need.”

Acknowledging the party had no “track record” in office, he said Reform was beginning a “process of getting serious as a government-in-waiting”.

He said: “It won’t be a series of soundbites in a manifesto. It’ll be a properly worked out plan with a serious legislative programme and a programme of change in the system itself.

“And I hope that that will convince serious-minded voters, including in the mainstream, in the centre of politics, who want to get shot of this failing Labour Government.”

Mr Kruger also rowed back on previous comments in which he had said Reform would spend money “like drunken sailors”, saying he had been convinced by Mr Farage’s pledge to reform the welfare system at the party’s annual conference.

He said: “I have absolute confidence that we currently have and will have fully costed and highly workable plans.”

A Labour spokesperson said Mr Kruger’s defection “ties Nigel Farage more closely” to the Conservatives’ “record of failure”, while the Liberal Democrats said Mrs Badenoch was “quickly finding out she has no-one left to lead”.

An MP since 2019, Mr Kruger was previously chief speechwriter to David Cameron, writing the then-opposition leader’s “hug a hoodie” speech in 2006.

Later, he was Boris Johnson’s political secretary during the final stages of Westminster’s Brexit battles in 2019.

More recently he has been the most vocal critic of the proposed assisted dying Bill, driven by his strong Christian faith but in stark disagreement with his mother, Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith.

His views on social policy have provoked criticism, including his comments in 2023 that marriages between men and women were “the only possible basis for a safe and successful society”.

Asked about those comments on Monday, Mr Farage said he was not “absolutist” but thought “the most stable relationships, the ones that last the longest, tend to be between men and women”.