'I have good friends on the Conservative benches who I know feel betrayed by me'

Danny Kruger became Nigel Farage's biggest scalp after he defected to Reform.

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It might already be a month since Reform’s newest MP Danny Kruger jumped ship to join Nigel Farage’s right-wing camp, but walking to the ex-Tory devotee’s Westminster office, you’d be forgiven for questioning if it really happened.

Two signs for his office - deep within the Palace of Westminster’s labyrinth of carpeted corridors and creaky stairwells — still show Mr Kruger as shadow minister for work and pensions under Kemi Badenoch.

Then inside, hung on the wall alongside Imperial War Museum recruitment posters and a painting of conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, is a framed map of Boris Johnson’s landslide 2019 election victory. Swathes of Tory blue dominate many of the UK’s regions. The outcome of the snap election steered by Brexit not only saw Mr Kruger, then Mr Johnson’s parliamentary secretary, return his boss to No 10, but also got him his first seat in parliament as the new MP for Devizes.

“I’m not putting the 2024 election map up,” he jokes. “We need that whole map to go turquoise don’t we,” he adds with a smile.

Breakups in any walk of life are hard, but for Mr Kruger, it’s clear to see his split from the Tories was a particularly painful one.

“I regret to say, having been a member and an employee and an MP for the Conservative Party for many years, my whole adult life... I think the time for the Conservatives as that principal opposition, that main challenger from the right, has finished,” the married father of three explains. His exit, probably the biggest scalp for Reform yet, was announced at a press conference alongside Mr Farage last month. A few weeks later, he wrote a letter to his 71,000 East Wiltshire constituents to explain his decision.