Nigel Farage was understandably ecstatic on Monday morning as he served his biggest ace to date: the Tory shadow minister for reforming Britain.
In a major coup, Danny Krieger unexpectedly announced that he was crossing the floor because he believes “the Conservative Party is over.”
To rub salt in the wound, he will now lead the reform’s new “preparation for government” team.
Having served as Kemi Badenoch’s junior work and pensions minister since November, Kruger’s dramatic move makes him the most senior sitting MP to move for reform in Britain.
But he joins a list of former Tory MPs who are beginning to believe it will be impossible to change the party’s fortunes after the disastrous result of the 2024 general election.
Boris Johnson supporter and former culture secretary Nadine Dorrie ditched Tory blue this month in favour of Farage’s turquoise, while former minister Andrea Jenkyns was elected as the reformist’s first regional mayor in Greater Lincolnshire in May.
Former Tory leader Jake Barry was also ousted in July, claiming: “Britain is broken.”
While there is an argument that these seemingly experienced politicians are helping to make reform more serious as a party, with each deformation, there is an increasing risk that they simply end up in the conservatives.
This raises concerns that opponents of reform have already jumped on.
A Labour spokesman said: “Any Conservative who defects on reform, linking Nigel Farage, more closely to their record of failure.
“Nigel Farage can recruit as many failed Tories as he likes – it won’t change the fact that he has no plan for Britain.”
They added: “The Tories crashed our economy and left public services collapsing. Britain deserves better than the Tory Respect Act of Reform, which would leave working people paying a very high price.”
The Liberal Democrats put out a similar message, saying: “Nigel Farage’s party is being transformed into the Conservatives before our eyes.
“It gets to the point where the only difference between them is just a slightly lighter shade of blue.”
Farage has long made it clear that he wants to replace the Tories, Britain’s oldest political party, as the main right-wing opposition to Keir Starmer’s work.
By casting himself as a kind of outsider leading a “radical” new, insurgent party, the reform leader has tried to clearly distance himself from the conservatives of Kemi Badenoch.
But the more Tories he accepts, the more Farage risks undermining his own anti-establishment message, which has so far helped catapult his rise in politics.
For example, Kruger raised many eyebrows when he urged Britons to support reforms today, saying: “If you have enough politicians, if you don’t trust Westminster, join us.”
He conveniently noted how he is someone who, to this day – was a key part of this establishment as a Tory MP for 14 years, Robert Jenrick’s campaign manager last summer, Boris Johnson’s political secretary in 2019 and was once David Cameron’s chief speechwriter.
And that’s before Farage’s own past, as a prominent member of the European Parliament is mentioned, or his new plan to win supporters of reform in the House of Lords ( an institution almost as old as Parliament itself).
The reform leader will have to manage this balancing act between trying to be seen as a serious political force ahead of the next general election and becoming a Tory by another name in the coming months – or toxic ties to the Conservatives could be his undoing.
Professor Richard Toye, a political historian from the University of Exeter, also expressed caution about Cock-A-Hoop Farage.
He said: “It may be true that ‘the Conservatives are finished’ as a reliable government party.
“However, the story of how the Labour Party ultimately replaced the Liberals as the main opposition party from 1918 to 1931 suggests that the struggle between Reform and the Tories could be long, drawn out and subject to several reversals of fortune.”
