I’m a lifelong Tory. Should I vote Reform?

For more than 30 years, I have knocked on doors and dutifully recorded voting intentions. I’m sure every party has their own abbreviations but during my Tory canvassing career, ‘U’ stood for undecided. I often wondered at – and, in part, admired – those people who were genuinely open to any party. It was an affliction that I did not suffer from, but I could see its merits.

Now that Nigel Farage has entered the race for a Reform party whose agenda is very close to the principles I’ve always believed in, I am, for the first time, a ‘U’. I live in the constituency of Boston and Skegness. My Conservative candidate, Matt Warman, is defending a 25,000 majority. He is not a bad man but he is a One Nation Tory: that is to say, the group which is to my mind potentially destroying the most successful political party in history – draining Conservative values and leaving it barely distinguishable from Labour.