1.2.2 – Established political parties
1.2.3 – Emerging political parties
2.2.1 – The structure of the House of Commons
Last week got off to a terrible start for the Conservatives, with news that Danny Kruger had crossed the floor to join Reform UK. The MP for East Wiltshire and – until news of his resignation – Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions said at a press conference hosted by Nigel Farage that “the Conservative Party is over, over as a national party, over as the principal opposition to the left”.
The news will come as a blow to Kemi Badenoch, who will have been looking to make gains in opinion polls following a fortnight of turmoil for Labour. Instead, she is now having to defend the Conservative’s record in the face of Kruger claiming her party, ‘have had a year of stasis and drift and the sham unity that comes from not doing anything bold or difficult or controversial’, words carefully chosen to underpin the idea of Reform as the real opposition to the Labour Government.
Switching party allegiance in the UK Parliament is referred to as crossing the floor. This term derives from a time when, with effectively only two parties, MPs who changed party would have to quite literally cross the floor of the House of Commons chamber in order to join their new colleagues. Even though Kruger has simply moved from one opposition party to another – and thus stayed on the same side of the chamber – the term is still widely used.
During the course of a Parliament there will be several MPs who lose the party whip and thus be labelled as ‘independents’. Some may, over time, join or set up new parties. However, it is quite rare for an MP to switch directly from one party to another. In the dying days of the 2019-24 Parliament, two MPs crossed the floor to join Labour from the Conservatives – Dan Poulter and Natalie Elphicke – however, neither contested the 2024 General Election. More unusually, in 2022, Christian Wakeford, the Conservative MP for Bury South, crossed the floor to join Labour and was later successful in defending his seat under the new party label in 2024. MPs who cross the floor can often face hostility from the local constituency branch of their new party, whom they will have campaigned against in the previous election, meaning that they may struggle to be adopted as candidates under their new party label.
Critics of MPs crossing the floor point to the fact that politicians, having been elected as the official candidate for a particular party, are betraying the wishes of the voters who returned them at an election. However, MPs are elected in a personal capacity and are, therefore, free to do as they please once they arrive at Westminster. Rosie Duffield, for example, was returned as the Labour MP for Canterbury in July 2024, but resigned from the party after less than three months, and continues to sit as an independent. It is not uncommon for the party whom an MP resigns from to call on that MP to resign their seat and trigger a by-election, in order to seek the endorsement of their constituents for their decision. In 2014, two disaffected nservative MPs – Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless – resigned from the party, and from Parliament, in order to seek re-election under the UKIP banner. Both were successful in their endeavours, giving UKIP their first MPs.
Whilst the defection is good news for Reform, it simply means they are back where they started in July 2024 with five MPs. Despite being joined by Kruger and Sarah Pochin – who won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election in May 2025 – Reform have also lost two MPs – Rupert Lowe was suspended from the party over bullying allegations, and James McMurdock suspended himself over allegations of financial misconduct relating to Covid-era financial loans. Therefore, despite their sizable share of the vote, Reform remain a relatively minor party in terms of the parliamentary arithmetic. However, the party will be satisfied that the momentum is shifting in their direction.
Despite Kruger’s accusations of stasis within the Conservatives, it is quite common for a party to be slow in regrouping following a trouncing at an election, especially after a long period in office. This was seen during the 1997-2001 Parliament when William Hague, despite being a highly effective politician and performer in Parliament, struggled to make any significant gains on Tony Blair and New Labour. Similarly, Ed Miliband’s time as leader of the Labour Party following their defeat in the 2010 election did little to convince voters that Labour were ready to re-enter office. In both instances, the recently defeated party engaged in a period of ‘soul searching’ to try and determine their future direction. The difference for Kemi Badenoch this time, however, is the increasing momentum behind Reform. By attracting defectors from the Conservatives (with the feeling amongst political commentators that others may follow), combined with their lead in opinion polls, the Conservative Party’s position as the pre-eminent party of the right is under threat, which means that her position is far more precarious than William Hague’s was almost 30 years ago.