AIBU to question Danny Kruger's Oxford background and charity funding?

[LostinLondon2025]

I’m curious about Danny Kruger, previously Conservative, now Reform, and apparently considering re-joining the Tories now that Nigel Farage has been caught out hiding the £5m he was given by a Thai Crypto billionaire to - hmmm - relax reporting rules on Crypto

I gather Danny did his DPhil at Oxford. Unusually, I can find no note of his college anywhere, nor the title of his DPhil, nor who funded it. Does anyone know?

I also have questions about his teaching at the Blavatnik School of Government. I happen to know the stipendiary pay there is unusually low - about £17k-£20k at the time he was there - and it’s therefore not the impressive intellectual flex that a lot of people think it might be. Quite a lot of rich foreign graduates use the Blavatnik for CV points. Was Danny, not foreign, being financially supported by his mother, the famous Bake Off host Prue Leith, during this time?

Who donated to Danny’s White City estate charity? Anyone who lives in Shepherd’s Bush will tell you he’s not a popular man and nor is his wife. Would you not expect those local people that they helped to be full of praise and gratitude?

I’m not a journalist, but my spidey senses are tingling here.

Who actually gives a toss, never heard of this guy. When you have cabinet ministers lying about their home address to avoid tax, ambassadors to America who fail security vetting...some bloke making up qualifications to become a mp is small fry...yes Rachel from Accounts I am looking at you.

I give a toss.

Good for you

I give a toss. Danny Kruger is quite well known. His mum’s Prue Leith isn’t she? Also, you might not agree with the current chancellor’s policies but please don’t join in with the sexist ‘Rachel from accounts’ crap that you’ve repeated there. No previous chancellor has been named as being ‘from accounts’. Can you think why that might be 🤔

A quick google suggests his thesis was about Burke. Not uncommon for someone who didn’t go on into an academic career not to have publications based on it. What is your suspicion - that he didn’t do one? Seems a bizarre thing to lie about and a very easy one to be picked up on given his background.

Yes because they didn't lie about their previous experience. Warren Mitchell called Lamont "Morry the Fish Monger" because of his Jewish background. Tebbit was portrayed as a Nazi. Hesseltine as Tarzan.

I bet you didn't pull anyone up for singing ding donv thd wicked witch is dead when Thatcher passed away

Reeves lied end of.

I give a toss.

I'm not remotely interested in @NotAnotherScarf's pathetic attempts to change the subject though.

Fair enough but would you care as much if it was a labour party member

Nice try at diverting the thread but it's about Kruger.

Is there no entry for his PhD thesis on the Oxford library catalogue?

I don't like what I know of him if only that he's opposed to the assisted dying bill

Quite.

I find his views grim. In his time he voted against stronger fire safety regulations, he
didn't want to reduce corporation tax, he's voted against the smoking ban, he's voted against measures to increase LGBT protections, he has voted against stricter regulation for fracking, he's voted against improving environmental water quality...it goes on and on...

He's also anti-feminist and has a weird fixation on 'traditional marriage' (maybe a weird insecurity given his mother and father had a 13 year adulterous affair...)

I agree op. I saw his article banging on about getting rid of civil servants. I’m sure CS does need a good bit of reform, sharpened up and slimmed down. But by and large I’m sure civil servants are hard working people, who care about the country and are doing their best to do a great job often in suboptimal circumstances, while paying the mortgage and putting food on the table.
Why does this pampered nepo baby feel he has the right to bad mouth them and threaten their livelihoods?
I am sure his qualifications are good on paper but if he was Dan from Burnley without the celeb mum or the right connections and the c£100k on hand to fund a Dphil, would his CV be quite so burnished?

She actually has those qualifications though and didn’t have a silver spoon or celeb parent.

Labour Party politicians are subjected to intense scrutiny. As indeed they should be. No complaints about that from me.

Reform politicians need to be subjected to equal scrutiny.

You seem very eager to deflect attention away from any scrutiny of Reform. Are you anxious about things coming out which you feel might impact on their chances of electoral success? I wonder why that might be?

Nobody referred to journalist George Osborne as “George from PR”, even though he was possibly the chancellor with the worst understanding of a country’s economics, and the worst legacy. “Rachel from accounts” is a sexist trope; just because other chancellors have been targeted for their ethnicity doesn’t mean we should stoop as low.

(Heseltine as Tarzan was a bit different because it related to his style and mannerisms, rather than being a put-down based on his ethnicity, sex, or religion.)

I can’t find any PhD by Kruger on a likely topic in the Oxford thesis repository. There are a couple of krugers working in science but no one called Danny.

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/collections/thesis?page=2&q=Kruger&search_field=all_fields

As an aside, did Warren Mitchell say that in his Alf Garnett persona? Was it written like that in the TV programme script for him to speak, as the famous bigot Garnett?
Because Mitchell was himself Jewish.

He will have needed to be a member of an Oxford college to get an Oxford University DPhil. So far Google isn’t producing any results here. I think OP is right to be suspicious.

Have we looked at Oxford Brookes? 😉

I totally give a toss about any MP of any persuasion that lies.

I give a toss. And it s a weird deflection - if you can't see a link between incomplete vetting at this level and incomplete vetting at the ambassadorial level then I don't know what to tell you.

I'm very interested in this, OP. I did wonder whether Kruger might wheedle his way back to the Tories at some point - I'm not a fan of his mother but I bet she's not that keen on the optics of Reform.

You'll be giving a lot of tosses then.

Sadly too true.

Just to add, since he gave his bizarre guardian interview, she's been asked on her IG account by several users as to where she stands on his views and each time she has (understandably) never responded.

I'm not sure his views would reflect well on her 'cuddly grandma of the nation' persona...