❓WHAT HAPPENED: Conservative (Tory) Party Member of Parliament (MP) Danny Kruger has defected to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, becoming the first sitting Tory MP to do so since the last election.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Danny Kruger, Nigel Farage.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Announced during a press conference; Kruger represents the East Wiltshire constituency (electoral district) in the House of Commons.
💬KEY QUOTE: “The Conservatives are over.” – Danny Kruger
🎯IMPACT: Kruger’s move signals further fractures within the Conservative Party as Farage’s party supplants it on the British right.
Conservative (Tory) Party Member of Parliament (MP) Danny Kruger has become the first sitting Tory MP to defect to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party since the 2024 election. Kruger, who has represented the East Wiltshire constituency (electoral district) in the House of Commons since 2019, was previously a political secretary to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and a member of current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s shadow work and pensions team.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Reform leader Nigel Farage, Kruger declared, “The Conservatives are over.” The centuries-old right-establishment party governed from 2010 to mid-2024, earning its biggest parliamentary majority since Margaret Thatcher in 2019—only to see a dramatic collapse in support in the 2024 general election amid record-breaking mass migration.
Speaking to Farage in 2023, before the Conservatives had been ousted, President Donald J. Trump told Farage they “really weren’t staying conservative… they were literally going far left,” adding: “It never made sense.”
Kruger said that he had been “honored” to join Reform’s efforts to prepare for government and expressed his hope that Farage would become Prime Minister. He said of his former party, “The rule of our time in office was failure. Bigger government, social decline, lower wages, higher taxes, and less of what ordinary people actually wanted.” He described the Conservative Party as “divided” with a “toxic brand.”
Kruger is the second Conservative MP to join Reform, following Lee Anderson, who had the Conservative whip withdrawn from him ahead of the 2024 election for saying that Islamists had “got control of [London Mayor Sadiq] Khan and they’ve got control of London, and they’ve got control of [Labour Party leader Sir Keir] Starmer as well.”
Nigel Farage is making an announcement LIVE from London. 🚨 https://t.co/NtEoJN9i4x
— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) September 15, 2025
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