LONDON — Danny Kruger has become the first sitting Conservative MP in this parliament to defect to Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK.

Kruger, the MP for East Wiltshire who was first elected in 2019, will head Reform’s department preparing for government. Reform has led opinion polls on national voting intention since the spring of this year.

“The Conservative Party is over,” Kruger said in his defection speech. “Over as a national party.” 

Kruger had previously worked as Boris Johnson’s political secretary from July to December 2019, and as a speechwriter to former Conservative leader David Cameron – famously writing the controversial “Hug a Hoodie” speech before Cameron became prime minister in 2010.

At a press conference on Monday, he said: “the flame [of conservatism] is passing from one torch to another,” adding that “while the torch is different, the flame is the same.” 

Reform, he suggested, embodied that the “new torch is already alight, already brighter than the one it is replacing, held aloft in firm and confident hands.” 

He condemned the Conservative’s 14 years in office, stating: “The rule of our time in office was failure. Bigger government, social decline, low wages, high taxes and less of what ordinary people actually wanted.” 

The former shadow work and pensions minister is the first sitting Tory MP to defect since last July’s general election, following a string of former Tory MPs joining the party.

Kruger claimed that since the Conservative’s general election defeat last year, “we have had a year of stasis and drift and the sham unity that comes from not doing anything bold or difficult or controversial.” 

Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch has come under repeated criticism since becoming Tory leader, as her party continues to languish in the polls.