After Yet Another Tory Defection, Reform Are Starting To Look A Lot Like The Conservatives 2.0

Britain's Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage is jubilant after securing yet another Tory defection.Nigel Farage was understandably ecstatic on Monday morning as he served up his greatest ace to date: the defection to Reform UK of a Tory shadow minister.In a major coup, Danny Kruger unexpectedly announced he was crossing the floor because he believes the “Conservative Party is over”.To rub salt in the wound, he will now be leading up Reform’s new “preparing 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 make the switch to Reform UK yet.But he joins a list of former Tory MPs who are starting to believe it will be impossible to turn the party’s fortunes around after the disastrous result of the 2024 general election.Boris Johnson supporter and ex-culture secretary Nadine Dorries ditched the Tory blue earlier this month in favour of Farage’s turquoise, while former minister Andrea Jenkyns was elected as Reform’s first regional mayor in Greater Lincolnshire in May.Former Tory chairman Jake Berry defected in July, too, claiming: “Britain is broken.”While there is an argument that these seemingly experienced politicians help make Reform seem much more serious as a party, with every defection, there’s a growing risk that they are simply morphing into the Conservatives. This is a concern which Reform’s rivals have already jumped on.A Labour spokesperson said: “Every Conservative who defects to Reform ties 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 crumbling. Britain deserves better than Reform’s Tory tribute act that would leave working people paying a very high price.”The Liberal Democrats put out a similar message, saying: “Nigel Farage’s party is shapeshifting into the Conservatives in front of our very eyes.“It is getting 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 supplant the Tories, Britain’s oldest political party, as the main right-wing opposition to Keir Starmer’s Labour.Pitching himself as some kind of outsider, leading a “radical” new, insurgent party, the Reform leader has tried to clearly distance himself from Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives.But the more Tories he adopts, the more Farage risks undermining his own anti-establishment message which has so far helped catapult their rise in politics.For instance, Kruger raised plenty of eyebrows when he urged Brits to back Reform today, saying: “If you’ve had enough of politicians, if you don’t trust Westminster, join us.”He conveniently overlooked how he is someone who – up until today – was a core part of that establishment, as a Tory MP for 14 years, the campaign manager for Robert Jenrick last summer, the political secretary to Boris Johnson in 2019 and once the chief speechwriter to David Cameron.And that’s before Farage’s own past as a prominent member of the European parliament gets mentioned, or his new plan to get Reform supporters into the House of Lords (an establishment 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 before the next general election and becoming the Tories under another name in the coming months – or those toxic links to the Conservatives could be his undoing.Professor Richard Toye, a political historian from the University of Exeter, also sounded a note of caution for the cock-a-hoop Farage.He said: “It may well be true that ‘The Conservatives are over’ as a credible party of government.“However, the story of how the Labour Party definitively replaced the Liberals as the main opposition party between 1918 and 1931 suggests that the struggle between Reform and the Tories could be long, drawn-out, and be subject to multiple reversals of fortune.”Related...'The Conservative Party Is Over': Tory Shadow Minister Defects To Reform UK'A Slap In The Face!' Tories Slammed After Strategy Chief Claims Party Has 'Done The Apologies'Even Kemi Badenoch Does Not Deny Tories Are 'Sliding Into Irrelevance' In Awkward Exchange

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