Morning Call: Tory Reformation
Nigel Farage poses an existential threat to the Conservative Party.
Good morning. Rachel here, with Freddie off this week.
All eyes are on the Conservatives this morning as Rishi Sunak launches the party’s manifesto at Silverstone, Northamptonshire (insert your own car crash joke). There’s already a fight brewing over the figures: the Institute for Fiscal Studies has run through the provisional numbers and found them wanting, while Labour also got in some early attacks long before anyone has actually laid eyes on the document. But some Tories are worrying more about the assault from the right than the left today, as I discuss below.
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It’s déjà vu time, as the Tories once again descend into internal debate on whether Nigel Farage is an existential risk to their party – or its potential saviour.
The threat of Reform has increased since Farage made his unexpected announcement last week to stand as a candidate in Clacton-on-Sea and re-assume his leadership of the party he founded. One Redfield and Wilton poll now shows Reform leading among over-55s – the target demographic for the Conservative’s “core vote” strategy; another has the insurgent right-wing party ahead of the Tories in 40 key Red Wall seats.
It is now only a matter of time before Reform, currently on 13 per cent on the BBC’s poll tracker, overtakes the Conservatives in some polls.
So it isn’t surprising that there has been a reprisal of panicked suggestions from some Tories that Farage could be brought into the fold.
The last time this happened ended in humiliation for the Tories. Farage spent three days swanning around the Conservative Party conference in Manchester in October, in his capacity as a GB News presenter, with a crowd of enthusiastic fans surrounding him at all times. (Aptly, he topped the New Statesman’s Right Power List the week before.) He teased the Conservatives, telling the BBC’s Nick Robinson that he could be more involved with the party “if it went in the direction he wanted”. Rishi Sunak was pressed to acknowledge that Farage would be welcomed back to the Tories if he wished to rejoin (Farage left it when John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty in the early Nineties); a number of Conservatives speculated that he might one day lead the party; the standout clip of the conference was the Brexit Party founder dancing with Priti Patel to “Can’t Take My Eyes off You”…
…And then Farage trashed the conference – and the Conservative Party – by saying he’d never consider rejoining while the Tories had “no answer” on immigration.
Once bitten, twice shy: some Conservatives are being more cautious this time around. Kemi Badenoch, who remains one of the front-runners to take over whatever is left of the Tory party after the election, dismissed Farage last week, saying “what he wants to do is destroy the Conservative Party”. (Indeed, the then Reform leader Richard Tice freely admitted much the same thing when I spoke to him just after the October conference.)
But others are still toying with the Farage potential – while some are positively embracing it. Suella Braverman, who still harbours her own (dwindling) leadership ambitions, issued a rallying cry yesterday for the Tories to “welcome” Farage and “unite the right”.
Farage repaid her with the snub that “all marriage plans are off”, suggesting she join Reform instead, which probably wasn’t what the former home secretary wanted to hear.
Nonetheless, the Reform question is terrorising the Tories. When I canvassed Conservative MPs and strategists before the local elections, some downplayed the new party’s prospects of winning council or constituency seats, but all acknowledged the wider risk it poses. The Conservative Party, one told me, has always enjoyed an “institutional advantage” in British politics, in that the right was united while the left was fractured between Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and other regional parties. Reform challenged that advantage: “The Conservative Party could get everything right, but if Reform is still somehow out there, it doesn’t matter.” The Tories would have no prospect at all of recovery, they argued, until they found a way to either destroy Reform or merge with it and unite the right, to use Braverman’s words.
Right now, a merger would cause more problems than it would solve. Reform is a fringe party full of fringe ideas (the “net zero” approach to immigration Tice told me about springs to mind) and fringe figures. One of the party’s candidates has claimed Britain should have “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”, praised Vladimir Putin, and called to “exorcise the cult of Churchill”; its candidate in the Rochdale by-election was a former Labour MP suspended from the party for sending sexually explicit messages to a 17-year-old. It appears highly unlikely to win any seats in the general election other than Farage in Clacton-on-Sea. Depending on how badly the Conservatives do, that sets up a post-election negotiation between a party with 50-200 MPs, and a party that might have one.
Yet as the Tories gather in Northamptonshire today for the unveiling of the Conservative manifesto, the spectre of Farage will be haunting them. Any grand gestures they make – particularly ones targeted at their base on issues like immigration and tax – will be rubbished from the outset and outdone when Reform announces its own policies next week. The party is not used to fighting on both its left and right flanks – for most of its long-established history, it hasn’t had to. Reform doesn’t need to win a slate of seats to prove catastrophic to the Tories. Panic is setting in and talk of a merger will only increase up to and beyond polling day.
But those looking to negotiate should be wary. When asked about the prospect of a merger, Farage replied “more like a takeover”.
Rachel’s picks
Bruno Maçães meets Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister and discusses what Donald Trump would mean for his country.
John Lloyd asks whether Europe’s rampant New Right could challenge the power of Brussels.
Will Dunn reflects on what we learned from the launch of the Lib Dems’ manifesto.
Rachel Cooke reviews the election debates so far. She concludes they are entertainment, not current affairs.
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Ben’s take
A slight breather from all things British if you don’t mind. Across the Channel it looks as if France’s very own Theresa Sunak is playing with destructive, nation-ruining fire. Amid some disastrous European election results, in which Marine Le Pen’s National Rally topped the poll, Emmanuel Macron has called for a snap general parliamentary election. For the uninitiated, this is for the National Assembly, not his presidency.
It’s a throwing-down-the-gauntlet contest, saying to his electorate: you want the hard right? Come on then, have them. Or rather, grow up and vote for me. His gamble assumes that when issues of the French state are on the ballot, as opposed to far-off European institutions, voters’ minds will sharpen, reassess and shift accordingly. Britons voted differently in the Euro elections they trudged out for. Maybe the French will too.
The trouble is, Macron is not that popular. Nor indeed is his party, Renaissance. But if there’s any European political personality adamant they can pull it off, it is Macron.
At the same time, however, the parties of the left, traditionally more enthusiastic about fighting each other than their opponents, have rallied into a united bloc and appear ready for the campaign.
A poll taken in the immediate aftermath of Macron’s decision to call the election found his “Ensemble” coalition, of which Renaissance is a member, down 7 points on 2022. National Rally is up 15 points. The left-wing alliance is down 4 points on 22 per cent.
The problem for Macron is that in his Jupiter guise he has alienated both the left and right and has made it difficult to do a deal with either. If he is hoping that in the second round the voters will hold their collective nose and vote for Renaissance then judging by Ben's figures he may be disappointed and it might be that the Renaissance voters will have to cast their votes for other parties to keep Le Pen at bay.
If the two parties do merge they could name it The Reform-a-Tory party.