Reform UK losing ground to Labour as Burnham ‘more plausible’ than Starmer, says Danny Kruger

Reform UK has lost ground to Labour during a “very difficult year”, Tory defector Danny Kruger has conceded one year after joining the party.

“What’s happened is that the Labour party has replaced a deeply unpopular leader with a new leader who looks more plausible,” Mr Kruger told Sky News on Sunday morning. “So the left is more united and so Labour’s vote has gone up.

“Labour have also taken a few points back in the polls from us, as it were, so we have come down a bit. We have also had a very difficult year.”

The 52-year-old MP, who defected from the Conservatives in September 2025 more than one year after they were sent out of government by the electorate, also denied that he regretted leaving the Conservatives and said Reform was still “on a trajectory towards victory”.

His comments come despite suggestions that Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives are improving in the polls, as Reform loses its shine following a series of recent scandals.

This week, Nigel Farage’s party was dealt another blow after a new poll predicted the Tories would beat Reform at the next election. The party has fallen to third place behind the Tories in The Telegraph’s poll tracker for the first time, following similar predictions from YouGov and More in Common.

It shows Kemi Badenoch’s party in second place behind Labour with 21.73 per cent, whilst Reform struggle with 21.66 per cent. Labour are on 28.7 per cent, according to the poll.

Reform topped the polls for more than a year until Andy Burnham entered Downing Street.

The party has faced a difficult few months, following controversy over a £5m donation from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne and two undercover stings by journalists.

During the Sky News interview, Mr Kruger was also asked his views on Burnham’s proposals to tackle the crisis of young people not in education, training or employment (NEETs).

The prime minister spoke at the Welsh Labour conference on Saturday about plans to tackle the issue of “youth detachment” and promised a “vision around rethinking childhood and reimagining youth in terms of the support that we give them”.

Mr Kruger called for cuts to the welfare bill in order to tackle the issue.

"I'm encouraged by the suggestion that we need to be much stricter about benefits for young people, who should be supported into work or should be working,” he said.

"I don't expect the Labour Party to accept these.

"What I suspect will happen is that they'll take the extra money - and remember what it looks like Miliband's proposals are, is to spend even more money for the next 10 years in the hope that in a decade's time, the welfare bill as a whole will start coming down.

"I expect Labour will end up taking the extra spending on support for young people, but they won't do the cuts."