Phil King: Kruger’s defection highlights the gap between protest and programme

Cllr Phil King is the Leader of Harborough District Council.

In my recent article for Conservative Home, I set out how we put Conservative values into practice in Harborough in Leicestershire: freezing the district share of council tax, investing in CCTV and community facilities, and proving that efficiency and fairness can go hand in hand. The defection of Danny Kruger MP to Reform UK may capture headlines, but it only sharpens the contrast between protest politics and the realities of serious government.

At our County Hall, there’s no hiding from reality. At the recent Leicestershire County Council Scrutiny Commission, we heard it laid bare: adult social care swallowing whole budgets, children’s services at breaking point, yet Whitehall dumping new duties on councils without funding them. These are not abstract debates. They are life-and-death decisions, about real lives, about whether vulnerable children are placed safely, or whether elderly residents receive the care they desperately need.

And against this backdrop, Reform UK breezes in promising the impossible — on a wing and a prayer. Kruger may say the Conservatives are “over”, but no serious politician who has faced these pressures could claim Reform is ready to govern. One Reform council leader even declared that taxes could be cut without a single service reduction. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up. It might raise a cheer in the pub or on social media, but anyone who has wrestled with a £1.3 billion county budget knows it is pure fantasy. Call it what it is: bonkers economics.

Protest politics is easy. It costs nothing to scribble slogans. But it doesn’t pay for care placements, fix potholes, or balance the books. On the day-to-day frontline of local government, Reform’s rhetoric looks not just lightweight but laughable.

Labour, meanwhile, offers only drift: higher taxes, more bureaucracy, and weakness on migration, law and order, and defence. Managed decline dressed up as a plan.

The Conservative task is a rapid renewal. We must show that we are again the party of government, nationally as well as locally. That means being:

• Freedom- and growth-loving. Cutting taxes and red tape to reward work and enterprise.
• Waste-cutting. Stripping out inefficiency and showing every pound is well spent.
• Serious on migration, law and order, and defence. Restoring border control, backing the police, and defending Britain in a dangerous world.

Voters don’t want yet more dramas about cake. They want competence, credibility, and delivery.

Reform is a protest, not a programme. Labour is drift, not direction. Only a revitalised Conservative Party – rooted in our values, tested in local government, and alive to the hard truths – can give Britain the leadership it now desperately needs.