Reform MP in Hypocrisy Row After Rightwing Think Tank Flies Him to Italy

A Reform MP who rails against foreign influence in British politics was accused of “absurd hypocrisy” after accepting a trip to Italy paid for by a Dutch think tank.

In July, Danny Kruger took the all-expenses paid trip courtesy of the Center for European Renewal (CER), a pan-European rightwing organisation, based in the Netherlands, which says it is dedicated to “the Western ideal of a civilised, humane and free society”. The CER has ties to the former far-right, authoritarian government of Viktor Orbán, which ruled Hungary from 2010 until he was finally dislodged in an election in April this year.

The Dutch-based organisation spent £724.24 on his flights, hotel and meals over the course of the two-day trip from 8 to 9 July, according to the parliamentary register of members’ financial interests. He claimed the purpose of his visit was to “attend a day-long discussion of global affairs”.

The CER organises an annual meeting called the “Vanenburg conference”, named after the Dutch town in which it was first held. It is unclear whether this is the event Kruger attended – neither Kruger, Reform UK nor CER responded to a request for comment.

Only months before his jaunt to Italy, Kruger spoke in the House of Commons, alleging “glaring foreign interference” in the Gorton and Denton by-election.

In the March 2026 debate on the Representation of the People Bill, he claimed that votes had been cast under coercion through “family voting”. He went on to say that Asian voters in the UK were “taking their orders on how to vote from mosques and from clans – often directly from Pakistan.” The Green party’s Hannah Spencer won the 26 February byelection with 40.7% of the vote, compared with 28.7% for Reform’s Matthew Goodwin. A police investigation into claims of family voting found “no evidence”.

On 28 August, Kruger tabled a series of proposed amendments to the bill, saying: “Recent changes in the makeup of Britain now jeopardise our democracy.”

Kruger’s amendments include removing the right to vote from Commonwealth citizens who are not British, limiting postal voting to diplomats and members of the Armed Forces and restricting election material to English, Welsh and languages “native to the British Isles”.

But Kruger appears to be more relaxed about some forms of so-called foreign influence than others.

CER is a Dutch non-profit organisation which “seeks to nurture in successive generations of Europeans an understanding of and devotion to the truth and wisdom embedded in the Western intellectual and moral tradition.” A key part of its programme is its Vanenburg conference, at which conservatives are encouraged to gather to exchange views and discuss the issues of the day.

CER also has a significant historical connection with the European Conservative, a rightwing magazine based in Budapest. The publication is funded by the Batthyány Lajos Foundation (BLA), a non-profit through which the former Hungarian government under Orbán used to channel funds to favoured projects. In 2021, its editor, Albino Mario-Fantiti, said the magazine “grew out of the activities” of the CER. In 2022, it was pulled from WH Smiths after it published a description of LGBT Pride month as “an opportunity to publicly parade some of the more dissolute aspects of human experience”.

Good Law Project policy advisor Cat MacLean said: “It’s not the first time Reform has been caught up in a foreign influence story and once again, the hypocrisy here is truly absurd.

“Kruger will happily allow a Dutch think tank with links to the Hungarian far-right to fly him out to Italy, and meanwhile, he refers to British citizens exercising their democratic rights as ‘foreign influence’, simply because they are Muslim.”

The revelation comes after a summer of scandal for Reform. The Metropolitan Police is investigating the party after a Channel 4 News exposé showed two senior party figures discussing ways to take £500,000 and donations in kind from an actor posing as a wealthy American businessman. Foreign donations are illegal under electoral law. Nigel Farage’s senior aide Dan Jukes and Reform’s head of policy James Orr stepped down pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

There have also been questions over Farage’s personal finances, including an undeclared gift of £5m from Thailand based crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne.