Reform’s newest MP Danny Kruger: ‘On a personal level I deeply regret rejecting the Tory party’

It might already be a month since Reform’s newest MP Danny Kruger jumped ship to join Nigel Farage’s right-wing camp, but walking to the ex-Tory devotee’s Westminster office, you’d be forgiven for questioning if it really happened.

Two signs for his office - deep within Palace of Westminster’s labyrinth of carpeted corridors and creaky stairwells - still show Mr Kruger as shadow minister for work and pensions under Kemi Badenoch.

Then inside, hung on the wall alongside Imperial War Museum recruitment posters and a painting of conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, is a framed map of Boris Johnson’s landslide 2019 election victory.

Swathes of Tory blue dominate many of the UK’s regions. The outcome of the snap election steered by Brexit not only saw Mr Kruger, then Mr Johnson’s parliamentary secretary, return his boss to No 10, but also got him his first seat in Parliament as the new MP for Devizes.

“I’m not putting the 2024 election map up,” he jokes. “We need that whole map to go turquoise don’t we,” he adds with a smile.

Break-ups in any walk of life are hard, but for Mr Kruger, it’s clear to see his split from the Tories was a particularly painful one.

“I regret to say, having been a member and an employee and an MP for the Conservative Party for many years, my whole adult life.... I think the time for the Conservatives as that principal opposition, that main challenger from the right, has finished,” the married father-of-three explains.

His exit, probably the biggest scalp for Reform yet, was announced at a press conference alongside Mr Farage last month. A few weeks later, he wrote a letter to his 71,000 East Wiltshire constituents to explain his decision.

Reform, currently 14 points ahead of the Tories in latest polls, was now the new opposition to the Labour party, he said, bemoaning a loss in voter confidence in the Conservatives on issues like mass migration and Brexit.

“We now have – in Nigel Farage’s party – the opposition that we need to Labour, so it’s not just a rejection of the Conservatives, which I deeply regret making on a personal level, it’s an active, positive choice to join Reform because I think they represent the change we need,” he says.

I push him on the emotional impact of his departure from the party he became involved in more than 30 years ago.

As a self-described “horrible little Thatcherite” in his youth, the Etonian later joined Conservative HQ in 2003, and would later work with former Conservative leaders Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard and David Cameron.

“It’s a very painful move,” he says, adding he’s conscious he’s “let people down” in Wiltshire where party members worked closely with him since his election win in 2019. “I regret that,” he says.

On those in Whitehall, he says: “I have good friends on the Conservative benches who I know feel dismayed, betrayed by me.” Although, he’s thankful of no personal attacks from former colleagues, including Ms Badenoch.

“However, in this business, you have to put what you think is the interests of your constituents and your country ahead of your personal loyalties,” he says. “Loyalty matters. Parties matter. We couldn't exist without them, but we have to put country ahead of party, and even if that is personally painful, we must do it in practice.”

Has slipping into the Reform - where the slogan is family, community, country - been an easy political marriage? Mr Kruger says so.

He already knew Reform MP Lee Anderson, and after “informal conversations” he says he went to speak to Mr Farage about joining the party, and was gratefully accepted.

“I expect there will be other MPs who move from the Conservatives to Reform,” he predicts, although rather hesitantly adds: “That’s assuming that Nigel actually invites them to do so.”

Mr Kruger’s defection to Reform was particularly surprising, not least following some of his recent criticism of the party.

Only in May he accused members of piggybacking on work by the Conservatives during a Commons debate on Brexit in a “desperate search to be relevant”. In July, he said Reform “would spend money like drunken sailors” during a debate on welfare.

“Well, literally since then, Nigel Farage stood up at his party conference and committed to significant welfare cuts,” says Mr Kruger.

“Tax cuts aside, we have to make spending reductions, not simply for the sake of the public finances, although that imperative is very, very real, but for the sake of the people who are currently languishing on out of work benefits.

“It is a scandal and a disgrace and a tragedy that so many people are being written off for life by a welfare system that is essentially inhuman in its in its in its judgment of what people's capabilities are.”

And what about the two-child benefit cap?

Reform pledged to scrap the restriction, a move that could appeal to left-leaning voters but would cost an estimated £3.5bn.

Mr Kruger supports the idea, but only for working families. “It’s right that the public are concerned that people whose livelihoods is benefits are able to have large families at the public’s expense,” he says.

Next month, Mr Farage will deliver a speech on Reform’s plans for the economy in what has been seen as a bid by the party to bolster its economic credibility, after its manifesto for £90bn in tax cuts, including a increase in tax-free allowance to £20,000, was widely questioned.

“We have to demonstrate, if we are to cut taxes, where the money is coming from for that,” says Mr Kruger.

Aside from the economy, immigration is at the centre of Reform policy, with plans unveiled last month to deport thousands of legal immigrants and scrap migrants’ indefinite leave to remain.

Mr Farage blames a so-called “Boriswave” of migration following relaxation of post-Brexit rules by Boris Johnson. Mr Kruger agrees. “I’m afraid, yes, he does have to take responsibility as leader of the government,” he says.

The party also wants to deport 600,000 asylum seekers, while building detention centres for 24,000.

Asked where the centres will be, he says: “I don't want to get into the details of where.... but we will be able to stand up facilities that will accommodate all of the asylum seekers and illegal immigrants that arrive.” He insists, through, they won’t be enormous.

The Senedd elections next year should provide some indication on the prospect of a Reform UK government. There is also the Scottish Parliament elections coming up too.

“We are the new national party of the right and my hope is that we take power in those countries and and can can demonstrate what a Reform government looks like ahead of the general election,” Mr Kruger says.

Winning power, so quickly after being formed. Can Mr Farage’s achievement leading the Brexit referendum be replicated, perhaps heightened, by entering No 10 in a few years time?

Mr Kruger appears cautious. Such is the state of the economy and Labour party, he says an election could happen “sooner than you think”.

But an “enormous job” lies ahead on creating policy and showing it can work. “We can’t just arrive on day one with a couple of slogans and ask the civil servants to do it for us,” he insists.

There is also the task of bringing together candidates for 650 seats. There will be “very strict vetting”, Mr Kruger says.

“If we pay our cards right, we will be in contention for government,” he adds.

After 35 minutes, the interview ends. Mr Kruger quickly makes his excuses and rushes out for a meeting. It gives me a chance to look up at his bookshelf.

There, among Lisa Nandy’s All In, David Skelton’s The New Snobbery and two books on Stonehenge (the ancient monument sits within his constituency), is Oliver Letwin’s book Apocalypse How?, which imagines a tech-dependent UK in crisis in 2037.

As the former minister looked into the future, I wondered if even he could have predicted a new party overtaking the Tories as the party of the right.

Such is the unpredictability of politics today.