Badenoch needs a better excuse for why her MPs are jumping ship

Danny Kruger’s defection to Reform UK has provided, and will surely continue to provide, much fodder to commentators both here and elsewhere.

It’s got a bit of everything: it casts the spotlight on the details of the Conservatives’ internal divisions; it halted the Conservatives’ momentum in its tracks just a week after Kemi Badenoch enjoyed a rare moment on the front foot, hounding the Government over its decision to give Peter Mandelson his upteenth chance in British politics; and better still, it’s also one of the rare occasions when, however unlikely, we can’t dismiss entirely the idea that someone is playing 4D chess.

The defection of Robert Jenrick’s campaign chairman could be a heavy and surprising blow to the man most people now expect to take over before the next election; but there is always the tantalising possibility that it’s a tactical move, akin to Douglas Carswell’s defection to UKIP in 2014, which might steer Reform in a direction where it is more amenable to some sort of pan-Right arrangement at a future date.

But this morning I want to instead consider Badenoch’s response. Defections are always embarrassing for a leader unless the MP in question is a complete crank or (to a lesser extent) an obvious opportunist, which Kruger is not. Does one take the high road and sound a dignified and regretful note? Or succumb to the loyalists’ temptation to execrate the traitor, even if it risks inviting awkward questions about why you were content until five minutes ago to share a party with this terrible person?

Our leader chose neither – and her alternative is a little confusing. Here are some quotations from an interview she gave to GB News:

“There will be people who will leave because they don’t like the new policies, like me saying that we need to live within our means, no more lavish spending, it’s time to cut welfare, time to get people out of work [sic].”

And:

“There may be some people who are impatient. I’m sorry if they’re not willing to wait, and they just want to rush to whatever is looking good right now, but what I’m doing is going to work in the long-term.”

Eagle-eyed readers might have spotted two problems here. The first is that these arguments contradict each other: one might leave because they don’t like Badenoch’s new policies, or they might leave because those policies don’t yet exist, but they can’t leave for both of those reasons. Indeed, the two arguments can’t really be simultaneously true.

But the second reason is more egregious. What policies?

I’m not disputing here that the Party has made some concrete proposals on things like reforming Indefinite Leave to Remain or keeping the Winter Fuel Allowance forever. But it feels significant that when Badenoch referenced “new policies”, she immediately followed not with examples of such but of things she’s said.

Those sayings are also, if we’re frank, crushing banalities, at least in the context of the Conservative Party. Have a serious think: who are the Tory MPs who we might seriously expect to defect because their leader has said that “we need to live within our means”, or “no more lavish spending”, or “it’s time to cut welfare”, or “time to get people [presumably into] work”? Do they exist? Are we supposed to think Kruger is that person?

(All right, if we’re being cheeky there might be some little truth to the charge, as he has just defected to a party he previously and accurately denounced as irresponsibly spendthrift. But the broader point stands.)

If it were simply an isolated incident, it might not matter very much – it isn’t an easy subject for any leader, and live television is an unforgiving medium. Yet it was only a couple of months ago that we noted that the gulf between word and deed, and the elision of the two, is becoming a hallmark of Badenoch’s style, when she stated that Javier Milei, Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding libertarian president, was “the template” despite, as mentioned, opposing any cuts to pensioner benefits.

This pattern goes right to the start of her leadership campaign; in the Q&A after her launch speech, Badenoch was asked about bringing in a hard cap on immigration numbers; her response is that we’d had one before and it hadn’t worked, which isn’t true.

Politicians are politicians, and journalists are jackals; for that reason, we do need to allow a measure of leniency when judging their responses to our questions. However true it might be, no Tory leader could simply tell a journalist that somebody defected because things were going very badly. So Badenoch needed something else to say, and that’s fine.

But if her team is reading this, then please: give her something better than to suggest that her MPs are jumping ship because she’s said we need to live within our means.