Malcolm Cupis: The murder of a conservative and the death of the Conservative Party

Malcolm Cupis is a public relations consultant, strategist and writer. He stood as a Reform UK candidate in the 2024 general Election and was a constituency chairman. He resigned from Reform UK in February 2025 and has joined AdvanceUK.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the political assassination of my friend, former Conservative MP David Warburton. Since then, as we all know, we have witnessed an actual Conservative assassination. Not just “an” assassination, but actually “another” assassination.

So much has been written about the murder of Charlie Kirk by many people far better informed than me, but I want to start this week by again making a point that I think is highly relevant and that all of us who are brave enough to make ourselves publicly visible in pursuit of what we hold dear.

The very fact that it is necessary to speak in terms of being brave to participate in our democracy, in order to be an advocate for policies which are not just perfectly legal but which reflect those of what is probably a significant majority of the electorate, should be more than enough to signify that drastic intervention is required, socially and politically, to restore our democracy and rule of law.

Nobody in this country should feel personally unsafe to communicate a political argument.

I have been, and continue to be, personally subjected to this sort of thing, and I know many others who are as well. I have been personally smeared by the national media, led by our state broadcaster, and by the Times and Independent newspapers. They have written things about me that were not just taken out of context, but embellished by lies. And left wing ideologists who live locally to me have, and continue to, use this as the pretext to describe me in similar terms to those used against Charlie Kirk. Nazi, fascist, racist, misogynist.

I have been physically assaulted and I still have this continually thrown at me by people who post anonymously on Facebook and X. I can’t afford a libel case against the media who started it and I can’t delete what they wrote about me. Those who take pleasure in dehumanising political opponents by using these slurs do so in the specific understanding that it is damaging to that person and that there is nothing they can do about it.

Those who abuse me feel justified based on what the media has concocted, and which is permanently available online. The persons who have physically assaulted me have felt justified in doing that for the same reasons. No doubt that the person who shot Charlie Kirk was just a step or two further along in this process. I have complained to the Police and they have made clear that they will not take action. Meanwhile writing an intemperate tweet lands a mother in prison for three years.

If we have leant anything from the murder of Charlie Kirk, it should be that those of us who share similar political perspectives, fears and ambitions, who prize freedom, who love our country, its culture and traditions, need to put petty differences aside and unite to face the existential threat that grows by the day. Not just a threat to our democracy now, but actually a growing threat to our culture, our way of life and, and I will not mince my words, our lives.

Instead, in the days following the murder of Charlie Kirk we have seen an increase in divisiveness and antagonism between the Conservative Party, Reform and the newly established and rapidly growing Advance UK. The drip of senior Conservatives crossing the floor to Reform continued with Danny Kruger becoming the first current MP to stumble past the despatch box in his eagerness to leave all his principles behind and pretend that he prioritises anything other than his own career.

It hurts to write that because I have long respected Danny Kruger for being an intelligent, articulate free-thinker. We appeared together on the BBC West live debate last year. Ironically he was a Conservative and I was a Reformer, and now neither of us belong to those parties. The fact that he has chosen to make the leap, and in such an apologetic manner, with no hint of criticism for the Conservative Party or its leader, other than simply to remark that he thinks they have less impressive prospects than his new objet d’amour, very much reminds me of Mrs Merton asking Debbie McGee “what first attracted you to the multi-millionaire Paul Daniels?”

Kruger was then rapidly followed by Maria Caulfield, former Health Minister, who lost her seat in Lewes last July. It seems significant to me that both of these were, of course, loyal Ministers to Boris Johnson and both remain unable to be personally critical of him.

Nigel Farage, of course, has a very public running feud with Boris and has sworn that he would never contemplate allowing him to join Reform. It doesn’t take much in the way of mental gymnastics to think the impetus for these defections may have come from the other great Boris Johnson disciple, Nadine Dorries, who announced her change of political heart a couple of weeks ago at the Reform annual conference.  One wonders if she may have nominally been put in charge of fishing for Tory signatures, and if her own bait for success may be the treasured seat in the Lords that she has openly coveted ever since Boris was drummed out of office.

Quite what Reform members are supposed to think is another question especially those in the affected constituencies and most especially for those in my neighbour, East Wiltshire, who have gained an MP that up until now they have been dedicated to fighting against. An MP who, of course, has personally campaigned for the introduction of new legislation to force a by-election in the event of a sitting MP defecting to another party, but who seems not to be so keen on the idea when he himself is the defecting MP.

As we have seen, and as I observed in my last column, there is no greater open hypocrite in Parliament than Nigel Farage, and so this volte face on the issue ostensibly suggests that perhaps Kruger has made an appropriate choice after all. I do wonder if he has had to sign the NDA though?

Having said that I have to say that I find myself in absolute accordance with Kruger, Caulfield and Dorries on the future prospects of the Conservative Party. I have had to face up to what I now see as an unarguable fact. The Party has been on life support and it isn’t kind to pretend that it can be resurrected.

The damage has been done, the wounds have been inflicted and have proven fatal. There are many brilliant Conservatives in Parliament and behind the scenes who have sat and watched this transpire over the last few years, and my heart goes out to them. Who exhausted themselves trying to stop Social Democrat imposters from destroying the party from within and then, despite heroic efforts at CPR, have been unable to keep the patient alive. I was an active member for 25 years and when I think of the hours I donated and the miles I trod in that time, I can’t help but still feel a great sense of loss.

The time has come to gently say to Jenrick, Rees-Mogg, Braverman, Patel, Francois and Duncan-Smith that their selfless efforts have been unsuccessful, the patient cannot be artificially kept alive, it is time to accept it with dignity and to let it go with grace.

The answer though is not Reform and I can say this with certainty from my own experience. The great divide in British politics now is not the argument over left and right, it is over personal freedom and liberty against authoritarian statist control.