Danny Kruger is Reform’s best recruit yet

In fairness, I suspect plenty of Tory MPs are looking for reasons to get out of party conference this year. East Wiltshire MP Danny Kruger – who this afternoon appeared at the Faragean elbow to defect to Reform – has probably found the single best, if drastic, get-out-clause available. 

Kruger isn’t the first MP to tread this path of course, but because of his character and standing within the party he leaves, this defection isn’t like the others. Nadine Dorries has probably fallen out with more people before breakfast than most of us will manage in a lifetime. Andrea Jenkyns seemed to have defected with the sole purpose of finding an audience for her questionable singing talents. The sad decline of TV talent shows in this country has a lot to answer for, as the nation’s deranged am-dram egotists are forced to turn to politics for their kicks.

But Kruger is more than someone who wore a blue rosette for a bit. He is an intellectual Tory, with ideas and positions which he doesn’t take to be fashionable or popular but because he believes they are true and because they resonate with a political tradition going back 350 years. His defection will give pause to long-time conservatives who might have viewed Reform as a wrecking vehicle. That Kruger thinks the cause of conservatism is best served not by the Conservative party but by Reform is a major blow to his former party’s intellectual credibility and, possibly, to its survival. 

‘The Conservative party is over. Conservatism is not’ said Mr Kruger. He delivered this in his sort of ‘considered but pained’ style. He has the slightest air of Princess Diana.

This style probably comes from his knowledge that the path ahead isn’t simple. Many supposed intellectual heavyweights of the Conservative party have trodden this path before and been welcomed with open arms by Good Ol’ Uncle Nige, only to find themselves in an anaconda-like grip once divisions emerge. I can imagine Peter Kay now does a good line in nostalgia comedy – ‘ooo remembers Douglas Carswell? What were all that about?’

What’s more, Kruger enters a party with plenty of libertarian instincts which are not necessarily natural bedfellows for his more traditional Toryism. During the Q&A session, while Farage was all smiles and pub-garden bonhomie, there was a more visible tension about Kruger. Having earlier condemned her leadership, he was careful to emphasise his personal regard for Kemi Badenoch and kept his answers considered and respectful. Perhaps he knows that, as much as today represents a major shift in British conservatism, the way ahead is not necessarily a clear one.