by Tom Jones, The Critic
Danny Kruger has created a nightmare on Matthew Parker Street
As an engineer, Kemi Badenoch is no doubt familiar with how a Terrain Avoidance and Warning System functions; based on radio altimeter data and calculated terrain closure rates, it automatically alerts pilots with a distinct warning when their aircraft is approaching dangerously close to the ground.
If there is one fitted in CCHQ it must be screaming “TERRAIN, TERRAIN! PULL UP, PULL UP!” to anyone who is listening. If anyone is listening.
Today, Reform announced not only their biggest and most serious defection yet, but perhaps the first serious, credible one too; the Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions Danny Kruger. One of the party’s most intelligent figures, of some 20+ years’ service to the party, he summarised his reason for leaving as, simply, “The Conservative party is finished.”
So far, Tory defections have generally been bit-part players, also-rans or have beens. Jake Berry and Nadine Dorries may have served in government, but they are no longer MPs, nor are they considered serious figures. They are the journeymen of yesterday, rather than the stars of tomorrow; Kruger, however, fits strongly in the latter camp.
Kruger is certainly the most high-status defection, as the first sitting shadow minister to defect. But he is also widely considered one of the most thoughtful, serious and intellectually capable MPs in the party right now. He is not, by position or by nature, simply a backbencher, whose loss can be waved away with a dismissive hand.
Whilst he had not quite attained the status of intellectual lode-star, he was widely seen as part of a cadre of rising stars in the party who, along with figures like Katie Lam, Nick Timothy and Neil O’Brien, formed a nexus of hope for disenchanted conservatives still hoping the party could be made right, and made to fight. Unapologetically but never crassly right wing, the ex-Cameron speech writer had become a central voice in policy development on topics from immigration to assisted dying, where he has won plaudits for his eloquent, intelligent and principled criticism of Leadbeater’s Bill.
Read also: Danny Kruger’s defection is seismic by Gawain Towler, spiked
Christian MP Danny Kruger defects to Reform, Christian Today