It’s been a mixed week for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader can – alongside Elon Musk and Nigel Farage – claim a partial win after Labour announced an audit and inquiries into grooming gangs (though stopped short of a national one). She also set out the first part of her plan for restoring trust – acknowledging that the Tories has made a series of mistakes while in office. However, an interview on the pensions triple lock was quickly weaponised by Labour, Tory MPs are hungry for a policy announcement and the Reform party is in the lead in several polls.
It’s why talk of a ‘Reform-Tory pact’ is rising up the the political agenda. When Badenoch was asked whether the Tories could team up with Reform ahead of the next election to push out Labour, she came out against the idea: ‘Nigel Farage says he wants to destroy the Conservative Party. Why on earth would we merge with that?’ Ask a Reform politician and you are likely to receive a similarly negative response. Farage and his colleagues spent much of their time attacking the Conservatives as they seek to establish Reform as the insurgent party perfectly places to take over after decades of failure under the two-party system.
However, informal conversations are taking place. There are figures in the Tory party sympathetic to the idea of some kind of pact or agreement – even if the leadership is not. It could just look like tactical voting at the next election, whereby voters who want Labour out simply make a calculation of which party to vote for in the seat they live in to make that happen. But others would like something more formal, where the parties agree not to run candidates against each other in certain seats. As one party old hand puts it: ‘A lot of Tories who don’t understand politics will do the straight maths and say if you add up the Reform and Tory vote, you beat Labour. They’ll then say Reform and the Tories agree on more than they disagree on so some kind of deal needs to be done.’
The other option – a more radical one – would be a merger whereby there is just one party and Reform and the Tories meld into one, similar to what happened in Canada after the 1993 wipe-out. However, while Badenoch is leader this is near impossible. It would also face fierce opposition from a large chunk of the Tory party. The final way a pact could work is talks ahead of the election that really come into action after the result. Some in both Reform and the Tory party take the view that there is a decent chance neither win an outright majority at the next election but together they can form a government. That means working out in advance how it might all work and the red lines for both sides. It’s why talk of a Tory-Reform pact is unlikely to go away any time soon – whatever Badenoch or Farage may say.
Comments