Tory shadow minister Danny Kruger has defected to Nigel Farage‘s Reform UK saying the Conservatives are ‘over’ as a party and the opposition.
The East Wiltshire MP, the son of Bake Off host Prue Leith, was unveiled by Mr Farage in London this morning.
He is a noted right winger, a member of the Popular Conservatives group who led opposition to the assisted dying law.
The former shadow work and pensions minister also ran Robert Jenrick‘s leadership campaign when the shadow justice secretary was beaten by Kemi Badenoch last year.
Mr Kruger, 50, has been tasked with helping Reform prepare for forming a government if it defeats Labour at the next election.
‘I fervently hope that the next prime minister is Nigel Farage,’ he told the audience in Westminster this morning.
Adding that it was ‘personally painful’ for him to defect, he added: ‘I hoped after our defeat last year that the Conservative Party would learn the obvious lesson, that the old ways don’t work, that centrism is not enough, that real change is needed.
‘But no. We have had a year of stasis and drift and the sham unity that comes from not doing anything bold or difficult or controversial.
The East Wiltshire MP, the son of Bake Off host Prue Leith , was unveiled by Mr Farage in London this morning.
He is a noted right winger, a member of the Popular Conservatives group who led opposition to the assisted dying law.
‘And the result is in the polls. And those lost voters aren’t coming back, and every day, more and more people are joining them in deserting a party that has failed.
‘And so this is my tragic conclusion: the Conservative Party is over, over as a national party, over as the principal opposition to the left.’
Mr Kruger joins Lee Anderson and Sarah Pochin as former Tories who have becoem reform MP.
And Mr Farage revealed at the press conference that Mr Kruger approached him to defect rather than the other way round.
It means Reform now has five MPs – the same as it had after the general election – despite two having quit the party in the past year.
Tory MP Jack Rankin tweeted that he was ‘gutted’ Kruger had left, adding: ‘Danny isn’t like the clowns they’ve accepted of late. He is smart and wise and good.
‘Whilst we share a similar analysis of the change the country needs, I disagree strongly about the vehicle with which to do so: But I respect his decision.’
