Tory MP and shadow minister Danny Kruger defects to Reform

Danny Kruger, a Conservative MP, has been the first sitting Conservative MP to leave the UK in favor of reforming the UK. Kruger has been an MP since 2019, and sat on Tory leader Kemi Badenoch's staff as a shadow job and pensions minister. The Conservatives are done, he told a press conference after sitting alongside Reform Party leader Nigel Farage. Kruger said he was honoured to be asked to help with government reform, and he hoped that Farage would be the next prime minister.

The Conservatives were no longer the main opposition party in East Wiltshire, according to the MP who has said he would not be triggering a by-election.

There have been times when I have been very proud to serve in the Tory party,

he said, but added: The rule of our time in office was mistrust.The bigger government, social decline, lower salaries, higher taxes, and less of what ordinary people actually wanted. This is my sad conclusion, the Conservative Party is over, not as a national party, over as the main opposition to the left. Athough he expressedhigh regardfor Badenoch, he said the Tory party had atoxic brandand thatnot doing anything bold, difficult, or controversial means is the same.

Decribing his departure from a party he has been a member of for 20 years as

personally painful,

he said. Reform will not only to overthrowrow the existing one, but to restore the functionality we need. Badenoch said in reaction to the defection of his children,

Danny has made his case very clear that this is not about me. I can't be deterred by that, Trump said, and I am not going to be carried away by these events.

I know this is going to happen if a party is shifting. I'm making sure people know what Conservative values are. Kruger's defection is damaging for Badenoch, not only as a Tory thinker and veteran, but also as the most influential among many Tory parties seeking to reform. Kruger told the BBC that following the press conference, he had come to the conclusion that the Conservative Party is

the same faction that murdered the people in the previous government

and does not have a chance of winning the next election. Kruger said he agreed with reform on several topics other than public service spending, noting MPs in July:

They will spend money like drunken sailors. I think we're all sober sailors now, Kruger said, I'm happy to say because since I said that Reform have updated their position on welfare spending, they have improved their position. "I was very worried that we should really reduce overall benefit spending. Nigel has made it clear that he does not want to reduce overall benefit spending, but he wants to help families with children.

Kruger is the second sitting member of Reform UK. Before joining Reform in 2024, Lee Anderson, who was then a Tory MP, sat as an outsider. After two of their MPs elected in the 2024 general election, Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock, have resigned from the party, Reform now has five MPs in the Commons. His previous work included stints as the former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's speechwriter, authoring the hug hoodie speech, and as Boris Johnson's former foreign minister while he was prime minister. Kruger spoke at a 2022 Parliamentary debate over the US's abortion ban, telling MPs that pregnant women had the absolute right to bodily integrity and that he didn't know why the UK was lecturing the US. In 2023, Kruger was one of the speakers at a National Conservatism Conference, an event sponsored by a right-wing think tank from the United States, who made remarks about the role of traditional family values in society. According to delegates, marriages between men and women were

the only real foundation for a safe and prosperous society

and one that

wider society should acknowledge and praise. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative prime minister at the time, distanced himself from the remarks. Kruger is the son of TV chef Prue Leith and an Old Etonian who attended Edinburgh and Oxford Universities before becoming a director at the Center for Policy Studies.

Nigel Farage will recruit as many failed Tories as he pleases,a Labour Party spokesperson said,it won't change the fact that he has no blueprint for Britain.

Britain is entitled to more than the Tory tribute act that will result in working people paying a high price. Badenoch pushed lifelong Tories into her party

in their droves,

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said of the Conservative Party,

a shell of its former self.

Nigel Farage's party is shapeshifting into the Conservatives in front of our very eyes,

she said. "It is getting to the point where the only difference between them is just a marginally lighter shade of blue.

Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to stay up to date with Westminster's inner workings and beyond.