If Kemi and Nigel want to stop clueless Keir destroying Britain, they need to do a deal

Telegraph

02-05-2025

'Tories won't work with Reform despite election drubbing', read The Telegraph headline, in a predictably Conservative reaction to yet another electoral bloodbath.
Asked about the prospect of local or national co-operation between the Tories and Reform following their disastrous local election results, which saw Nigel Farage's party make huge gains, Nigel Huddleston, the Tory co-chairman, declared: 'I can't see why we'd do that ... Reform's golden strategy is the destruction of the Conservative Party and they don't share many of the values and principles that we hold.'
He added: 'We've done deals in the past on a council level where it's to implement Conservative policies and Conservative principles.
'We are under new leadership now. We're using our time in opposition wisely, we're developing a whole new set of principles and policies because we need to present ourselves as an alternative government.
'Not a protest party, not a populist party that will go around saying that we've got simple, straight answers to really complex questions. That's not a credible long-term proposition.'
It might not be a 'credible long term position' but it's working for Reform, and the Conservative Party pretending otherwise is an insult to its own electorate. A 17.4 point swing to Reform in Runcorn and Helsby, one of the safest Labour seats, isn't a protest. It's a revolution.
Moreover, who are the Tories kidding when they say Reform 'don't share many of the core principles and values that we hold'? They're a low-tax, low-immigration, anti-woke party that wants to slash government waste. If those aren't Conservative values then the Tories truly are finished. Quite a few Conservatives would rather nationalise steel than import it from China, too.
Similarly, Farage calling the idea of a pact with the Tories 'revolting' also lacks credibility, for precisely the same reason: he is a former Conservative being propelled to power largely by former Conservatives. I can think of far more revolting things: a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition with a side order of Greens being chief among them.
Both parties can pretend they have nothing in common until the cows come home – but voters on the Right will never forgive them if they allow their differences to bring about more of the same come 2029.
Yes, Reform are more Right-wing than the Tories, as evidenced by the socialists protesting outside polling stations on Thursday shouting 'racists' and accusing the party of 'demonising' migrants. Yet the reason for Reform's success also threatens to be its failure. This is why a pact has to happen, if not before the next election, then immediately afterwards.
Yes, the Tories may be on their knees right now. Voters certainly haven't woken up to the party being 'under new leadership'; according to YouGov, one in five British adults have never even heard of Kemi Badenoch. But the local election results, while horrific, are not the extinction level event Reform claims them to be. They've lost a great many seats from the high watermark of 2021, and they've been pushed into second place by Reform even in places like leafy Goffs Oak in Hertfordshire. But they've not been wiped out completely. They've even won the mayoralty in Cambridgeshire.
Sure, there's an Electoral Calculus poll doing the rounds suggesting that if the swing in Runcorn was applied nationally, it would see Reform gain 427 seats, Labour lose 255 seats and the Conservatives wiped out to just four.
But we are talking about a working-class constituency where the sitting Labour MP, Mike Amesbury, punched a constituent in the face. The same rules don't apply to seats in the South West and the Home Counties.
On this, the mayoral votes are telling. The combined Reform and Tory vote would have been enough to obliterate the combined Labour/Liberal Democrat/Green vote in Doncaster (58 to 37 per cent), Greater Lincolnshire (68 to 24 per cent) and North Tyneside (50 to 44 per cent). But in the West of England, the Left massively outgunned the Right with a 59 per cent vote share compared to 39 per cent for Reform and the Tories.
Unlike Boris Johnson, who could reach parts that other politicians couldn't, huge swathes of the Blue Wall still elude Farage.
And this isn't simply because they are inhabited by 'wet' Tories. Just as there are plenty of Thatcherites out there who no longer support the Tories, there are plenty of others who still can't bring themselves to support Farage, considering him to be a political spiv.
Their worst fears about 'untried and untested' Reform are immediately confirmed by Andrea Jenkyns celebrating victory in the Greater Lincolnshire mayoral race with the suggestion that migrants should be 'housed in tents instead of hotels'.
Amid growing resentment towards Labour – and with Sir Ed Davey hobby horsing around – the Tories could well mount a comeback in these constituencies in three years' time with a bit of hard work.
Farage lacks Blue Wall appeal and Badenoch lacks Red Wall appeal but together they appeal to both. Righties currently finding the idea of voting for either unpalatable would strangely be more comfortable with a mash-up of Farage keeping the Tories honest, and the Tories keeping Reform from going off the reservation.
This is a huge electoral strength that must be capitalised upon. The facts of life, as Margaret Thatcher once put it, remain conservative. Additionally, Labour could not be more unpopular now, even among the 33 per cent of a 60 per cent turnout who voted for them last year. Sir Keir Starmer is on the ropes, but conservatives, both small and big C, must box clever.
What's truly astonishing about these two Right-wing parties is their comparative lack of electoral nous compared to the Left.
Sure, the Conservatives are alleged to have played some dubious games. Jenkyns, who defected from the Tories to Reform last November, claimed to have been 'smeared' by her old party, which she said 'called the police on me and implied I slept with political friends'. At one point, her opponents tried to remove her from the ballot.
But similar dirty tricks have been used by the parties of the Left for years.
I don't condone it, but rather than getting mad with each other, the Right should get even on its real enemy: the so-called progressives hell-bent on destroying Britain.