Danny Kruger’s defection to Reform is a body blow for Kemi Badenoch’s failing project. But Nigel Farage doesn’t have the answers either, says William Atkinson

The last Conservative has left the building. Is it time to turn out the lights? That is what ambitious, talented and intelligent Conservatives are thinking following Danny Kruger’s defection to Reform UK on Monday. After 350-odd years of intermittent service to the nation, is it time to admit that the Tory race is run?

Kruger is qualitatively different to other Conservative turncoats. Not only is he a sitting MP – unlike Nadine Dorries, Jake Berry or Maria Caulfield – but a genuine intellectual in what John Stuart Mill long ago dismissed as “the stupid party”. He served as David Cameron’s speech writer, Boris Johnson’s political secretary and Robert Jenrick’s campaign manager. His recent book

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