Keep your eyes on Reform defector Danny Kruger

Freya Thompson is the Secretary of Abortion Rights UK and in her day job works in the voluntary sector.

In 2023, Danny Kruger stated in The Times ‘I don’t want to go back to the 1950s – I want to go further’. Once you read past the clickbait headline, it reveals that what Kruger actually meant is that pre-1950s was a time where women were fully economically active in society, as opposed to the era of housewives that came after, and this is something he wishes to return to.

However, it begs the question, what exactly is it that Danny Kruger wants to go back to? Based on his voting record and speeches, we can deduce the following.

Reproductive rights

Since being an MP, Kruger has consistently voted against reproductive rights:

• 18 June 2020: voted against the provision of abortion services in Northern Ireland
• 27 April 2021: voted making telemedical abortion (‘pills by post’) permanent
• 18 October 2022: voted against introduced buffer zones (150m safe access zones) outside clinics
• 17 June 2025: voted against decriminalisation of women under the abortion law
• 17 June 2025: voted for requiring in-person consultation before abortion pills are prescribed (ending ‘pills by post’)

In June 2022, while speaking during a debate in Parliament on the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, Kruger commented that he did not believe “that women have an absolute right to bodily autonomy” in relation to abortion because “in the case of abortion that right is qualified by the fact that another body is involved”. He later claimed that his comments were ‘misunderstood’ and that he supported the 1967 Abortion Act, after facing backlash from his constituents in Devizes. 

In an extreme take, on 20 June 2025, in reaction to the decriminalisation vote in parliament Kruger tweeted that “After this week I feel like Evelyn Waugh at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939. The politics of ‘progress’ has found fulfillment in the union of two total malignancies: the campaigns to abort babies at full term and to kill old people before their time.” It is statements like these that are deeply insulting but unfortunately unsurprising. 

On 17 July 2025, Kruger went into more detail in a speech to an almost empty House of Commons deploring the recent vote that partially decriminalised abortion. Kruger echoed the language of US evangelical Christian activists, stating that “last month, in the space of three days in one infamous week, this House authorised the killing of unborn children – of nine-month-old babies…We gave our consent to the greatest crime: the killing of the weak and most defenceless human beings.”

It appears that Kruger isn’t the first anti-choice former Conservative MP to be welcomed with open arms into Reform. Since Reform’s inception, five former Conservative MPs have joined the party, including Andrea Jenkins, who has described herself as personally “pro-life”, Nadine Dorries, who spent years pushing to lower abortion time limits and impose new restrictions on access, and most recently Maria Caulfield, who repeatedly voted to restrict abortion access — including opposing buffer zones around clinics, voting against at-home early medical abortion, and describing abortion providers as “unethical, unsafe, and unprofessional.” Reform leader Nigel Farage has also taken a firmer stance, describing the 1967 Abortion Act as “totally out of date” – we agree Nigel but not for the same reason!

Make no mistake, it is no coincidence that Kruger is the 6th anti-choice politician to defect to the ranks of Reform. 

The role of women in the family and LGBTQ+ rights

In May 2023, Kruger spoke at the National Conservative Conference in London, which has previously featured far-right speakers such as US Senator John Hawley, now-US VP JD Vance, and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban. In his speech, Kruger stated that “the only basis for a safe and successful society” was marriage between men and women, who should stick “together for the sake of the children”. 

Here, he implied several things: that the nuclear family is the only family for success, that LGBTQ families aren’t included in this vision, that single parents aren’t included in this vision, and that for a woman having a husband and children is the ultimate pillar of success.

When questioned on Kruger’s views on marriage on 15 September 2025, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage doubled down, stating that “I think one thing for certain is children who have two stable parents have a better chance in life. And the most stable relationships, maybe not my example, but the most stable relationships, the ones that last the longest, tend to be between men and women.” It seems this forms part of Reform’s agenda. 

A culturally conservative agenda, Christian Nationalism, and anti-wokeism

Kruger has hit out about “identity politics” as part of his support of the need to return to a culturally conservative agenda.

In his maiden speech in Parliament on 29 January 2020, Kruger spoke on the “issue of identity”, stating that “we are children of God” but that “today those ideas are losing their purchase, so we are trying to find a new set of values to guide us, a new language of rights and wrongs, and a new idea of identity based not on our universal indeed value or on our membership of a common culture but on our particular differences.” 

In July 2021, Kruger tweeted “When people derive their identity – indeed, their existence – from their feelings, then there is no more debate, no more relationship, and no such thing as society” in response to Rosie Duffield MP’s stance on transgender people.

In his speech criticising the part decriminalisation of abortion in July 2025, Kruger claimed that Christianity was being replaced with a new religion: ‘wokeism’. Kruger described this as “a combination of ancient paganism, Christian heresies and the cult of modernism, all mashed up into a deeply mistaken and deeply dangerous ideology of power that is hostile to the essential objects of our affections and our loyalties: families, communities and nations…It must be banished from public life – from schools and universities, and from businesses and public services.” 

Anti-immigration rhetoric

In the same speech criticising on abortion in July 2025, Kruger stated “in abandoning one religion we simply create a space for others to move into as the dominant faiths. There are two religions moving into the space from which Christianity has been ejected, and one is Islam…this is a Christian country – if it is a country at all – and I cannot be indifferent to the extent of the growth of Islam in recent decades.”

Kruger has also been open about his stance of asylum seekers and immigration. He consistently voted for a stricter system of asylum, 21 times to be exact, as well as stricter enforcement of immigration rules. Kruger was highly critical of his previous party’s immigration policy, stating that the party has consistently failed to reduce immigration despite it being a manifesto pledge in each election. He also recently described asylum seekers coming to the UK as “illegal breaking into this country” and that they “should be deported”.

Kruger’s political background

Most concerning about Kruger’s defection is his previous standing within the Conservative Party. Kruger was deeply embedded in several Conservative Governments, serving as chief speechwriter to then party leader David Cameron from 2006-08. In August 2019, he became the political secretary to then Prime Minister Boris Johnson until he was elected as MP for Devizes with 63.1 percent of the vote in December 2019. 

Following this, he spent time as a Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Michael Gove in September 2021. In 2022 he resigned his post, endorsing Suella Braverman during the leadership election, who was on the right-wing of the party. He was re-elected in the new constituency of East Wiltshire with just 35.7 percent of the vote. He resigned from the party on 15 September 2025 and defected to Reform UK. He is now in charge of preparing that party for government, and has encouraged his former colleagues to join him.

In his resignation speech, Kruger said that that “the old ways don’t work; centrism is not enough; real change is needed.” If Kruger’s previous positions were aligned in centrism, then what’s next? 

Kruger’s connections with Reform UK

Kruger also stated in 2023 that he considered Lee Anderson to be a “great, a good guy”, a year before Anderson defected to Reform. This is despite Anderson’s record of downplaying the need for food banks, supporting the return of capital punishment, and alleged sexist comments whilst part of the Women and Equalities Committee (I know, we can’t believe it either). Now part of the same party, it appears he is following in Anderson’s footsteps.