First sitting Tory MP defects to Reform
Nigel Farage has unveiled Danny Kruger as the first sitting Conservative MP to defect to Reform UK.
The MP for East Wiltshire, who was first elected in 2019, said “the Conservative Party is over” on a national level and “over as the principal opposition to the Left”.
Mr Kruger was on Kemi Badenoch’s front bench as a shadow work and pensions minister, but did not inform her about his defection before the press conference alongside Mr Farage.
The former political secretary to Boris Johnson declared that Reform was the “new torch of conservatism”.
Mr Kruger was one of a handful of MPs who met JD Vance earlier this summer.
He was pictured at a party with the US vice-president and Thomas Skinner, a businessman who starred on the BBC’s The Apprentice, earlier this year.
Mr Kruger, who is the son of television presenter Dame Prue Leith, had helped to run Robert Jenrick’s campaign for the Conservative Party leadership last year.
He told journalists that although he wished that Mr Jenrick had won the race, he felt “it is too late” for him to take the helm from Mrs Badenoch to save the Tories from Reform.
The East Wiltshire MP has said that there will not be a by-election in his constituency, adding: “I intend to continue to do my job as an MP in exactly the way that I have done since I was elected last year.”
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
