Cross section Is US-influenced religious right on the rise in UK politics?

Two distinctive heads could often be spotted in the front row of recent Reform UK press conferences: Danny Kruger, the party's head of policy, and James Orr, now a senior adviser to Nigel Farage.

- Peter Walker

As well as guiding the policy programme for what could be the UK's next government, the pair are both devout Christians who have trenchant views on social issues such as abortion and the family.

Kruger, an MP who defected from the Conservatives in September, and Orr, who is a Cambridge academic, also sit on the advisory board of a rightwing thinktank called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), led by Philippa Stroud, a Conservative peer who is strongly religious. One of the main shareholders in the ARC is Paul Marshall, the hedge fund millionaire who owns GB News and the rightwing Spectator magazine.

Marshall is a devout Christian.