‘Kruger’s defection proves Reform offers nothing to the people Labour was founded to represent’

It was a galling sight for Conservative and progressive voters in East Wiltshire. Danny Kruger – the MP re-elected to represent them little more than a year ago on a Tory ticket – unveiled by Nigel Farage as the latest Reform UK recruit.

I know from being the Labour candidate against him at the General Election that there were already strong feelings about Mr Kruger. Now the man who correctly identified that the Tories left the UK “sadder, less united and less conservative” after their time in office has parted ways with his party and jumped on the Farage bandwagon. 

In doing so, he’s brought one question into sharp focus – given who it’s now recruiting, how much longer can Reform face both ways, and continue to cosplay as a friend of working people and champions of the working class?

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Look at the cast of characters who Nigel Farage is assembling.

Even before Kruger was unveiled as the latest defector, Reform already had the problem that it increasingly looked like a lifeboat for failed Tories past. 

Lee Anderson, Nadine Dorries, Jake Berry, Andrea Jenkyns. It’s painfully like Mr Burns, sensing that the meeting has turned against him, donning a comedy moustache, calling himself Mr Snrub and hoping nobody notices.

Still, at least some of those defectors could mount an argument – whether you believe it or not – that, as contemporaries of Boris Johnson, they had been part of his 2019 appeal to the Red Wall and had a commitment to ‘levelling up’. The Kruger defection, though, is of a different order. 

An Old Etonian ‘High Tory’ from the shires, living a world away from the least well-off communities in our country who desperately need an active government, now claiming – despite his presence at the heart of 14 years of Conservative government – that he’s on their side.

This alone would be jarring and raise incredulous eyebrows. But then there’s also the fact that Mr Kruger’s infamous views can find a home in Reform.

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This is a guy who caused outrage when he declared that women don’t enjoy 100% autonomy over their own bodies; told the Commons that we need a Christian restoration and that modern sensibilities represent “heresies” which “must simply be destroyed”; and was slapped down by Rishi Sunak for telling the National Conservatism Conference that marriage between a man and a woman was “the only possible basis for a safe and successful society”.

What does this say about the values that underpin Reform as a party – and is this patrician politics really one which commends itself to people who want to build a more equal, forward-looking society?

Most importantly, there’s Reform’s agenda, which Kruger appears to have radically – or deliberately – misread. 

He claims that the party is not “set on the destruction of the established institutions of the country”.

His problem is that with every day that passes, Reform’s intention to import the worst of Trump’s America to Britain becomes clearer. Politically appointed judges. A partisan civil service. Ministers sitting outside, and unaccountable to, Parliament.

Just this week, we’ve seen their morally bankrupt plan to break up families by ripping up leave to remain and bringing in forced deportation – tearing the heart out of communities across the country and doing untold economic and social damage.

Let’s call this Kruger defection what it is – a telling slip of the mask. 

Reform dress themselves up as friends of the working class while at the same time welcoming those who have been part of the governing elite and who would break the ties that bind us together.

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It’s a defection which could not have given us better proof that Reform offers nothing to the people our party was founded to represent but the same old faces pushing grievance and division. 

Our task as we head into Conference is to expose that fact, and to offer the people for whom we were founded unity, progress, and hope.

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