Farage may not be the greatest danger facing the Tories

Telegraph

17-02-2025

Show up at a Conservative Party function and it's a fair bet that someone will engage you in a discussion about what to do about Reform UK. It's also likely that no one will talk about the threat posed to the Conservative Party by the Liberal Democrats.
The fact remains that if Kemi Badenoch is to make electoral progress, she has to fight off an attack from both Reform UK on the Right and the yellow peril on the Left. You could argue that it was Reform votes rather than LibDem votes that enabled the LibDems to steal more than 50 seats from the Conservatives last July, but a significant number of former Tory voters transferred their allegiances, and – as we all know – once you've done something once, it's much easier to do it a second time around.
I've interviewed quite a few of the new LibDem intake over the past seven months and I have noticed they all have one thing in common. Without exception, if you met them at a social occasion and they told you they were an MP, you'd assume they were Conservatives. They look like Conservatives, they talk like Conservatives, and many of their beliefs seem to be in line with various strands of Conservative thought.
They would all be on the David Laws side of the LibDems, with no beard or a pair of sandals to be seen (perhaps I exaggerate on the beard front). Some of them – whisper it – even seem 'Brexity'.
It's unfair to single any out... so let's do it. Jess Brown-Fuller defeated Gillian Keegan in Chichester, but put them in a political identity parade and you'd have difficulty in telling them apart. Mike Martin, the new LibDem MP for Tunbridge Wells can 'outhawk' most Conservatives on defence. Lisa Smart from Hazel Grove, who impressed on BBC's Question Time this week and within weeks of being elected was made shadow home secretary by Sir Ed Davey, takes a very no nonsense approach to law and order. Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne), Bobby Dean (Carshalton & Wallington) and Luke Taylor (Sutton & Cheam) all won their seats from the Conservatives and will be difficult to shift, partly because they don't frighten natural Tory voters.
So yes, Kemi Badenoch needs to win back voters who have gone to Reform, but she must be careful, especially in her rhetoric, to remember that the maxim that parties win from the centre-ground remains just as true today as it ever did. And banging on about the ECHR is not the way to do it.
Arming Europe
It's very rare that I agree with Donald Trump about anything, but in his first term I applauded him for pointing out most European countries weren't paying their way on defence. Many of them bucked up their ideas and nowadays 23 out of Nato's 32 members do contribute at least 2 per cent of GDP – in 2014 only three did.
However, now the game has changed. The week's summit of Europe's leaders in Paris will, I am sure, result in a commitment to rearm and increase expenditure on defence. But can we please get away from this arbitrary percentage of GDP? Instead, each country should identify what it needs to spend money on to protect itself and wider European nations and calculate accordingly.
This should also be based on what each nation can contribute and specialise in. It's not all based on increasing the size of our respective armies, navies and air forces. Britain is particularly good at cyber warfare, intelligence, naval power and global reach. France is good at rapid deployment and amphibious warfare while Germany excels at cyber defence and military hardware.
Poland, which already spends 4 per cent of its GDP on defence, has huge expertise in hybrid warfare and a rapidly expanding munitions and hardware manufacturing capability. I could go on.
If Trump delivers on his pledge (threat?) to decouple America from Europe, then make no mistake, Britain's defence budget must rise to levels previously unthinkable. This year we will spend around £57 billion on defence (2.33 per cent of GDP). Labour's strategic defence review, headed by former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson, is due to be published in March. If my sources are correct, he is planning to suggest a massive increase in defence spending, which is being resisted in No 10. That resistance may be weakening, so it would not surprise me at all if the review wasn't delayed until the second half of the year.
Germany's future
Next Sunday's German general election threatens to throw up a result from which it is not easy to see a coalition being formed. The ruling SDP will be reduced to a rump. According to the latest poll, it will be lucky to get 16 per cent – its worst result in Germany's post-war history. Unusually, the vote for the junior coalition partner, The Greens, is showing no sign of collapse, so it may be that they can go into coalition with Friedrich Merz's CDU/CSU.
The free market liberals of the Free Democrats might not make the 5 per cent hurdle for representation in the Bundestag, and if that happens the CDU would then presumably have to try to form a grand coalition with the SDP. But that would mean the resurgence of the far-Right AfD – its support has doubled to 20 per cent since the last election in 2021 – would become the official opposition. As the Germans would say: ' Um Gottes Willen '. Heaven help them.