Kmflett's Blog

In September 2025 Jenrick’s Tory leadership campaign manager Danny Kruger defected to Reform. Now Jenrick has himself

History is not instant so what Robert Jenrick’s defection to Reform means for reconfiguration on the right, in the context of the recent and further past requires some analysis and research.

However following Eric Hobsbawm’s dictum that the left must become historians of the present as well as the past some immediate comment is possible

In September 2025 Kruger who was an opposition front bench Minister, a sign of Badenoch’s political direction, he was of course on the hard right of the Tory Party, defected to Reform. He was in the autumn of 2024 the campaign manager for Robert Jenrick’s Tory leadership bid.

That campaign failed but Jenrick has still been running it aiming to push the Tories even further right. Kruger seems to have decided that the best way to pursue it was simply to join Reform.

Now Jenrick has done the same

Kevin Maguire reported in the New Statesman that Kruger did not tell Jenrick of his plan. One might ponder if he needed to given the direction of travel that hard right Tories seem to be taking.

Meanwhile also in the New Statesman LibDem leader Ed Davey said he was talking to numbers of Tories who are defecting to the party. He claimed to be adopting the John Major approach to politics of village cricket and tepid beer. That sounds like something that would also appeal cricket and beer enthusiast Farage, but it is also another piece on the jigsaw of the reconfiguration of the right. Historically the Liberals and Tories quite frequently interchanged sections of their membership over issues like Ireland and Free Trade.