Conservative MP and Shadow Work and Pensions Minister Danny Kruger has defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
In a press briefing together with Farage on Monday 15 September, Kruger announced that he believed the Conservative Party is ‘over’ and said he is honoured to join Reform to help elect Farage as Prime Minister.
Kruger is the MP for East Wiltshire and previously served as political secretary to Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister.
His defection marks the first time a sitting Tory minister and shadow cabinet member has defected to Reform UK.
“The rule of our time in office was failure. Bigger government, social decline, lower wages, higher taxes, and less of what ordinary people actually wanted,” Kruger said.
“And now our country is entering the most profound set of crises in my lifetime under a government even worse, far worse, than the one it replaced.”
“We have had a year of stasis and drift, and a sham unity that comes from not doing anything bold or difficult or controversial, and the result is in the polls,” Kruger said.
Having been a member of the Conservative Party for 20 years, Kruger said it was painful to defect to Reform UK and that he had great respect for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
However, he said that he has defected to Reform UK to not just overthrow the current system, but to “restore the system we need”.
He said he believe the UK was still a great country, but that it is has been ‘badly damaged’ and that ‘centrism is not enough’.
“This is my tragic conclusion: the Conservative Party is over, over as a national party, over as the principal opposition to the left,” Kruger said.
Leave a Reply