This morning Nigel Farage unveiled his latest defector: Danny Kruger. The Wiltshire MP boasts impeccable Tory credentials. He served as David Cameron’s speechwriter, Boris Johnson’s political secretary and Robert Jenrick’s campaign manager just last summer. His defection today will therefore come as a serious blow to those who argue that the Conservative party stands a better chance than Reform of winning the next election.
Kruger told a press conference in Mayfair that his former Tory party were ‘finished as the main opposition to the left’. His argument is that Reform is the ‘new home’ of conservatism. His new role in Reform is ‘preparing the party for government’ – a theme Farage has expounded all summer.
Kruger told the room that he believes Reform now stands the best chance of saving the country at the time of the next election. He suggested that his decision to defect was not down to electoral survival, noting that his Wiltshire seat is more at risk from the Liberal Democrats. Kruger said that he hoped July 2024 would be a wake up call for the Tories, and that ‘the old ways don’t work, that centrism is not enough, that real change is needed.’
Nigel Farage is making an announcement LIVE from London. 🚨 https://t.co/0JMOcYxcY8
— Reform UK (@reformparty_uk) September 15, 2025
Ten months of Kemi Badenoch’s leadership had produced, in his words, ‘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 [clear] in the polls, and those lost voters are not coming back.’ He therefore concluded that ‘the Conservative party is over, over as a national party.’
Today’s defection is different from the likes of Graham Simpson or Laila Cunningham. Danny Kruger has been an instrumental figure in the machinations of the Tory right over the past two years. He is a serious thinker with numerous writings on themes around community and country. That he has now chosen to quit today will be interpreted within the Conservatives as perhaps the gravest warning yet that the next election could be fatal for the world’s most successful political party. Intelligent and ambitious right wingers will be left to draw their own conclusions as to which vehicle offers them the best chance for preferment and success.
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