Kemi's Tories are struggling to survive - and Boris has to take a big chunk of the blame

A stench of decay emits from Westminster. Our traditional, two-party duopoly now feels rotten to the core. The sense of breakdown is all too clear on the Labour benches. Under Sir Keir Starmer's shambolic leadership, they have combined spectacular mismanagement with ideological folly. Their reckless tax-and-spend policies have left a huge black hole in the public finances and paralysis in the economy, just as their failures on immigration are causing real public anger.

Sir Keir himself has now been revealed as a man without courage, conviction, competence - or a moral compass. In recent days, as the Downing Street machine becomes increasingly dysfunctional, he has managed to lose his credibility, as well as ambassador to the US and his Deputy Prime Minister, yet the Conservatives have gained no ground from Labour's crises. Despite some sharp performances from their front bench in the Commons over the departures of Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson, they remain hopelessly trapped in the wilderness.

So great is the damage caused to their reputation by their final years in office that it is possible they will never recover. Indeed, their defiant attacks on the Government often seem more like a death rattle than the beginnings of a revival.

Kemi Badenoch, their beleaguered leader, pleads for patience but with her party sinking far below 20% in the polls, time is not a luxury she can afford. Others, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, call for unity on the right through an electoral pact with Nigel Farage's insurgent Reform movement. But there seems little chance of that.

Millions of Reform followers are just as hostile to Badenoch's party as they are to Starmer's, believing that the last Conservative government eagerly promoted mass immigration, woke identity politics, record taxation, and the green agenda.

Particular anger is focused on Boris Johnson, who, instead of "taking back control" after Brexit, opened the borders even more widely during hapless premiership. This policy resulted in the so-called "Boris Wave," a revolutionary influx of non-EU nationals, complete with rights to welfare, social housing, education, and NHS treatment.

So within large sections of Reform, the Tory party is viewed as a foe rather than a friend. Reform would have little to gain and much to lose from any electoral agreement. It is the Tories who are in the desperate position and battling for survival.

Reform's ascendancy is illustrated by the string of senior Tories moving into Farage's party, including former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, and ex-MPs Maria Caulfield and Henry Smith. But this week saw by far the most important defection when Danny Kruger, the MP for East Wiltshire, announced his switch of allegiance.

Kruger's step was doubly significant, because not only is he the first sitting MP to defect, but also he was the Tories' leading intellectual. As the author of several acclaimed books and ex-Downing Street adviser, he will bring gravitas to Reform's development of policy.

But what must be even more worrying for the Tories is that a figure of his calibre sees no future for them. His "tragic conclusion," he said on Monday, is that their brand "is toxic" which meant that "the Conservative Party is over, over as a national party and over as the principal opposition to the left."

Defectors have always played a vital role in our politics by illuminating patterns of change. The departure of the radical Joe Chamberlain from Cabinet in 1886, over his opposition to Irish Home Rule, heralded a major realignment at Westminster as Liberal Unionists banded with the Tories to block self-government in Dublin.

In 1904 Winston Churchill moved in the opposite direction, His abandonment of his Tory allegiance presaged the colossal Liberal landslide the following year. More recently, in 1981 the Social Democratic Gang of Four, led by Roy Jenkins, almost managed to reshape the centre-left, but Labour eventually prevailed.

Today, the two main parties are far weaker than they were forty years ago, regularly falling below a combined share of 40% in the polls, With serious heavyweights like Kruger on board, Reform is sailing towards power, while Labour and the Tories struggle to stay afloat.