Farage said that Kruger would be in charge of preparing the part for government.<\/p>\n
Updated at\u00a006.18 EDT<\/p>\n Key events<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 8m ago<\/p>\n Farage claims Starmer won’t be Labour leader at time of next election, and Burnham would drag party to left<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 18m ago<\/p>\n Kruger says, even if Robert Jenrick took over as Tory leader, he does not think they could now overtake Reform UK<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 22m ago<\/p>\n Farage accuses police of not taking death threats against him on TikTok seriously<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 28m ago<\/p>\n Kruger says he was ‘very disappointed’ by Boris Johnson’s record in government after Brexit<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 35m ago<\/p>\n Farage says vast majority of people attending Tommy Robinson rally in London were ‘good, ordinary, decent people’<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 42m ago<\/p>\n Kruger says Tories were ‘failure’ in office, they are finished as national party, but conservatism ‘isn’t over’<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 50m ago<\/p>\n Danny Kruger defects to Reform UK from Tories, with Farage putting him in charge of preparing party for government<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 1h ago<\/p>\n Musk calls Ed Davey ‘craven coward’ after Lib Dem leader accuses him of ‘dangerous interference in our democracy’<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 1h ago<\/p>\n Mandelson should lose Labour whip in Lords if it is shown he was not ‘frank’ about Epstein relationship in vetting, MP says<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 1h ago<\/p>\n UK and US line up string of deals to build modular nuclear reactors in Britain<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 2h ago<\/p>\n Smith sidesteps question about whether Mandelson should lose Labour whip in House of Lords<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 2h ago<\/p>\n Starmer did not see ‘detail’ of Mandelson’s emails to Epstein until after PMQs, skills minister Jacqui Smith says<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 2h ago<\/p>\n Starmer facing fresh questions over Mandelson emails to Epstein<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 2h ago<\/p>\n Starmer urged to condemn Elon Musk’s ‘fight back or die’ speech to London rally as Labour MPs question his leadership<\/p>\n <\/a>Show key events only<\/p>\n Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature<\/p>\n Farage claims Starmer won’t be Labour leader at time of next election, and Burnham would drag party to left<\/p>\n Q: Do you fear Keir Starmer<\/a> or Andy Burnham more at the next election?<\/p>\n Farage says:<\/p>\n It\u2019s a very hypothetical question. You know that Keir Starmer will not be leader of the Labour party at the next election. In fact, he might not even last the next year.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s Andy Burnham, you might say he\u2019s very personable, but he also would drag Labour way to the left, and that\u2019s not the direction the centre of gravity in this country is going. It\u2019s going in a different direction, and it\u2019s almost as if Westminster now, this current parliament, is so far detached from where the country is going that it\u2019s almost not true. So I\u2019m not bothered.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a006.58 EDT<\/p>\n Q: Danny, you wrote David Cameron\u2019s \u2018hug a hoodie\u2019 speech. Do you still think that?<\/p>\n Kruger says he is still proud of that speech. He says it was profoundly conservative. It stressed that young people need care and support. But it was also strong on the need for proper crime to get a robust response.<\/p>\n Kruger criticises the way the speech was spun by Andy Coulson. He says he learned from that that you cannot expect to get two ideas in a headline.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Farage says he thinks the Conservative party is \u201cnowhere near its electoral floor\u201d. He thinks they will cease to be a national party after the elections next year.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Kruger says when Lee Anderson found out that Kruger was the Tory MP who was defecting, Anderson joked: \u201cWhich one of us is leaving?\u201d<\/p>\n They were joking about it being \u2018one in, one out\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n Five Reform UK<\/a> MPs were elected last year. Two of them have left (Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock), but two have now joined (Sarah Pochin and Kruger).<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Kruger says, even if Robert Jenrick took over as Tory leader, he does not think they could now overtake Reform UK<\/p>\n Kruger said that that he supported Robert Jenrick for the Tory leadership, and he thought the party would be doing better now with Jenrick as leader. Jenrick wanted to take the fight to Labour<\/a> immediately, he said; Kemi Badenoch thought the party needed to spend time working on a new policy platform.<\/p>\n But he said, if Jenrick took over now, \u201cI don\u2019t think he could succeed in overtaking Reform\u201d.<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Farage accuses police of not taking death threats against him on TikTok seriously<\/p>\n At the start of the press conference Farage said that he had received explicit death threats on TikTok. He said that he had reported them to the police, but had now been told that they were not taking any action.<\/p>\n Asked how worried he was by these, Farage said that he knew Charlie Kirk well. Getting death threats himself was \u201cnot a very pleasant experience\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n So I did challenge the police to do something, but they\u2019ve decided this does not meet the threshold. Gosh, imagine if I make I made some joke about the trans community, probably be in real trouble.<\/p>\n And that is at the heart of two-tier Britain, two-tier policing, two-tier justice and two-tier Keir, and it\u2019s one of the reasons the flags are going up all over this country.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a006.43 EDT<\/p>\n Kruger says he wants to ensure that if Reform UK<\/a> wins the election, the civil service will implement real change.<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Kruger says he was ‘very disappointed’ by Boris Johnson’s record in government after Brexit<\/p>\n Q: Danny Kruger was political secretary to Boris Johnnson. But Reform UK<\/a> is blaming him for letting immigration get out of control.<\/p>\n Kruger says he was political secretary to Johnson before the 2019 election. He is \u201cenormously proud\u201d of what Johnson did in terms of getting Brexit done.<\/p>\n He goes on:<\/p>\n I was very disappointed with what followed, firstly, with the failure to properly grip the system of Whitehall itself, which Brexit was only a prelude to. We needed to restore the government to the people. That was what people voted for in 2019 and I think we\u2019ve failed to do that, particularly during Covid.<\/p>\n And then secondly, most obviously, with the wave of immigration that the government oversaw.<\/p>\n And while, as a Conservative MP in a sense, I bear some responsibility for that, in practice, I was arguing strongly against the degree of both legal and illegal migration that the government was presiding over.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Q: What do you think Musk meant when he talked about overthrowing the government?<\/p>\n Farage says Musk has been \u201cchucking abuse at me now for six months\u201d. He says journalists want him to hit back, because that would make a good headline. He is not going to do that, he says.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to abuse Musk or Tommy Robinson or anything. We\u2019re going to get on with building what we\u2019re trying to build.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Q: As an Old Etonian, can you really understand the experience of ordinary people?<\/p>\n Kruger describes that as a \u201ccheap shot\u201d.<\/p>\n And he points out that for 10 years he has run a charity working with ex-offenders.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a006.34 EDT<\/p>\n Q: Danny, you say Britain is not broken. Do you realise Farage says it is?<\/p>\n Farage says Kruger is \u201cmore bullish\u201d than he is.<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Farage says vast majority of people attending Tommy Robinson rally in London were ‘good, ordinary, decent people’<\/p>\n Nigel Farage and Danny Kruger now now taking questions.<\/p>\n Q: Do you expect more Tories to defect?<\/p>\n Kruger says the Tory party is not dead. It is just over as the main opposition. He says he does not think it will ever recover.<\/p>\n He says he would like to see other Tories follow him.<\/p>\n Farage says he keeps things under wraps. No one knew Kruger was defecting today.<\/p>\n He says the Tories have \u201czero chance\u201d of winning the next election?<\/p>\n Q: What is your response to the Elon Musk<\/a>?<\/p>\n Farage says:<\/p>\n As for Saturday, I think the vast majority of people that turned up were good, ordinary, decent people who are very, very concerned about what\u2019s happening in this country,<\/p>\n I\u2019ve noticed that the wave of flags that was that started about three weeks ago, going up around the country, far from subsiding, from what I can see this weekend, is accelerating massively.<\/p>\n There is, and it is a collective two fingers up to a British establishment that they feel utterly betrayed by in every single way.<\/p>\n As for the Musk comments, Farage says that Musk is generally rude about him.<\/p>\n He says it would be good to have some explanation from Musk as to what he meant by \u201cfight\u201d. He goes on:<\/p>\n We are radical, but we\u2019re not revolutionaries.<\/p>\n If the fight that Musk was talking about was about standing up for our rights of free speech, if it was about fighting in elections to overcome the established parties, then that absolutely is the fight that we\u2019re in.<\/p>\n And the reason you asked the question, I think the context of the way the word was used left a degree of ambiguity.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a006.31 EDT<\/p>\n Kruger says Tories were ‘failure’ in office, they are finished as national party, but conservatism ‘isn’t over’<\/p>\n![\"Danny](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/3436.jpg\")
Danny Kruger at the Reform UK conference Photograph: Reform UKShare<\/a><\/p>\n