MP Danny Kruger said he defected from the Conservatives because the country is in an “advanced state of crisis” and Reform UK is the only hope for bringing real change.
Speaking exclusively to GB News, he said: “On a personal level, for what it’s worth, it is very painful. It’s not an enjoyable experience. I don’t feel any sort of particular joy or sort of adulation or pleasure at this change.
“And on a personal level, I recognise I’ve caused a lot of dismay to a lot of people I really like and respect in the Conservative Party. So there is nothing personal about this, but I have come to the conclusion that in our rather brutal first past the post parliamentary system, there’s only one challenger to the left, and that’s got to be either Reform or the Conservatives.
“There simply isn’t space for both of them, and the reason why we are such a denuded rump in Parliament now, we the Conservative Party, the whole right, in fact, is because we were standing against each other at the last election.
“If that happens again, I don’t think this country has much hope, but we are in such an advanced state of crisis, I’m afraid much of it the consequence of Conservative Party policy in the last 14 years, but accelerated by this terrible Labour government that we have, we simply can’t have another four years of it while the Conservatives try and sort themselves out and get back into power.
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“We have to get behind the leader and the party that I think has the best chance of bringing real change to this country. And it’s not just a rejection of the Conservative Party that I’m making here, and I do reject them with great sadness and nothing personal against Kemi. Personally, I think she’s done an admirable job in very difficult circumstances.”
He added: “On a personal level, I think she’s shown real courage and resilience doing the hardest job in politics. So I’m not going to attack her personally. I think any leader of the opposition would have had a tough time over the last year, but I do disagree with the strategy.
“I think what she and we should have done is a much more bold assertion of Conservative principles and policies over the last year. But here we are. I’m not just rejecting the Conservatives, I’m actually enthusiastically backing Nigel Farage and the Reform party, who I think have shown over the last year, and I hope with my appointment, this is demonstrated too, they have become a real, serious party of opposition, with the intention to be the party of government.
“What they’ve asked me to do is to lead their preparation for government, because, as Nigel said yesterday, being so ahead in the polls, there’s now a real prospect of winning. Nothing is guaranteed, and it would be irresponsible not to take the position they’re in seriously and do what Labour plainly failed to do in the last Parliament, which was to prepare properly for government.
“So if we get into power in a couple of years’ time, there will be a plan, there will be a fully worked out program of legislation and Civil Service reform, vitally as well too, in order to enact the policies that we’re going to put to the public at the election.”
On the Unite the Kingdom rally at the weekend, he said: “I think something profound is happening in our country and in our culture, and there are some sort of unattractive expressions of that, but mostly, I think you’ve got decent, ordinary, patriotic people standing up and saying that they’ve had enough, and they don’t want to be run by an establishment that despises them.
“That is the revolution that is happening. But we want an English revolution, which is fundamentally one of restoration, one of bringing back the systems that used to work, that used to make Parliament sovereign, that used to make the government accountable to the people, used to make the elite genuinely part of their own country and respecting the values and the aspirations of ordinary people. That’s the restoration that we need.
“I don’t want to trash our institutions or create some sort of new Leninist future. I actually want our country back, but I actually also think that that is the best recipe for the future. The modern age actually demands the old-fashioned ways of doing things, family, community, country, the things that we have campaigned for and that Reform stands for.
“The new age of tech can actually, I think, restore an old-fashioned vision of the local community and can bring dignity to work again, support families with wages that pay for a family life.
“So I’m very future oriented. I think there’s great optimism in our country, but we do need to restore the foundations of our politics and, frankly, dismantle the modern, progressive superstructure, the bureaucracy that is stifling enterprise and inhibiting community life.”
