Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has had a rather good few months, with a number of opinion polls showing the Clacton MP’s party topping the Tories – and, occasionally, even Labour – among Brits. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has rubbished the idea of a Reform merger – but it would appear her backbench colleague Suella Braverman has other ideas…
Speaking in Washington DC, the former Tory Home Secretary lauded Donald Trump’s style of ‘unfiltered conservatism’ and said her party should follow his lead in making the ‘unsayable mainstream’. She insisted the ‘formula to beat Labour’ involved the Tories and Reform working together. ‘I like Nigel Farage,’ Braverman told the Telegraph before stressing that ‘there isn’t enough space in British politics for two conservative parties’. Going on, the ex-Cabinet minister declared her support for certain Reform policies, including leaving the ECHR and pushing a ‘very low and robust approach to migration’.
Braverman added:
We do need to unite the right. We need to come to some kind of accommodation. I don’t know what the precise form looks like – whether that is a merger, whether that is a coalition, whether that is a supply and confidence agreement, whether that is a non-aggression pact. I don’t know what it looks like. In general, I am in favour of unifying the right.
How curious. Last year, it emerged that 40 per cent of Tory members backed the idea of a Tory-Reform merger – and according to the polls, a number of Conservative supporters fancy jumping ship to Farage’s party altogether. Not that the former Home Secretary is a stranger to this mindset – in December it transpired her husband Rael had started campaigning for Farage after her former colleague Andrea Jenkyns jumped ship to Reform.
Not that Badenoch is all that keen on the idea. ‘Nigel Farage says he wants to destroy the Conservative Party,’ she told the crowd at her first speech of 2025 last week. ‘Why on earth would we merge with that?’ Shots fired!
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