Throughout the last parliament, Labour leader Keir Starmer and Lib Dem leader Ed Davey did not have a bad word to say about each other.
In fact, they hardly even acknowledged the existence of each other’s parties. Neither did they shake hands on a formal Lab-Lib electoral pact. They just both kept pounding away at the Conservative government’s weak spots and allowed it all to happen organically. Anti-Tory voters in every constituency congregated behind the ‘progressive’ party best placed to oust sitting Conservative MPs. It worked like a dream for both.
Right now Farage is having huge fun baiting Tory leader Kemi Badenoch at every possible turn and it is not hard to see why
The contrast between the bounty from that arrangement and what is going on across the right of centre today is painful to behold. Reform leader Nigel Farage is far more of a natural pugilist than Davey and was always going to intrude into the Tory party’s private grief during its protracted leadership contest and aftermath. Right now he is having huge fun baiting Tory leader Kemi Badenoch at every possible turn and it is not hard to see why: Badenoch doesn’t so much keep falling into his traps as leaping into them head-first. In doing so, she risks turning a party with five MPs into the equal of a party with 121 in the eyes of right-of-centre voters.
Instead of just ranging her guns on the multiple targets already being offered up by a hopeless Labour administration, Badenoch is expending energy trying to crush Farage and Reform by talking about them from dawn to dusk. Given that low brand visibility was the most effective brake on Reform’s poll rating until six months ago, this is a strategy which seems to fall well within the scope of Conquest’s Third Law (that the behaviour of an organisation can best be predicted by assuming it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies).
Just in the past week, Badenoch has lost a bruising media argument about whether Reform has overtaken the Conservatives in terms of members – it clearly has – and in doing so turned a clever Christmas holiday stunt by Reform into the dominant political story of the festive season. This has in turn generated another Kemi vs Nigel splash on the front of the Mail on Sunday today – a scoop about her moaning to GB News bosses about the amount of airtime given to Farage.
Where Starmer and Davey once had an undeclared non-aggression pact, Badenoch and Farage now have a famous feud. For Farage this is fine – more headlines and more credence for the idea that he and Badenoch are locked in a fight for dominance on the right that he may well be on course to win.
For Badenoch, it is a disaster. Her perceived hostility towards Farage is likely to upset voters who once backed the Tories yet have recently transferred their allegiance to Reform. It will foster the notion that she is just another ‘Tory Wet’ who is rattled by Reform’s full-blooded agenda on immigration, net zero, tax, law and order, anti-wokery and other touchstone issues. In short, it will make them less likely to return to the Tory fold, even if they live in areas where the Tories are best placed to oust a sitting Labour MP.
A far smarter approach from Badenoch would be just to ignore Farage and make Labour her target in every fight in which she engages. That would both cheer up remaining Tory supporters and make those who were drifting off to Reform like her more.
On the occasions when ignoring Farage is not an option, Badenoch would be wise to stress her appreciation of him as a protest politician harnessing the righteous anger of voters towards a broken system. Defining him as the great disrupter and herself as the purveyor of workable solutions would be a far more subtle and effective approach.
Of the 98 constituencies where Reform came runner-up in July, 89 were won by Labour. So Reform, if left to its own devices, is going to become a much bigger thorn in the side of Labour than the Tories.
Achieving calmer relations with Reform is in my view becoming a prerequisite for Badenoch to succeed. The current toe-to-toe slugfest with Farage only makes sense if she can knock him out and squash Reform down to 5 per cent in the polls. Given the negative reputational baggage the Tories are carrying from their failures in power and the momentum already achieved by Reform, that seems highly unlikely.
So the Tories must create an atmosphere where anti-Labour sentiment can work its organic wonders across the country, achieving a mirror image of the Starmer-Davey effect from the summer. If Badenoch cannot do this then her MPs may soon start hankering after someone else who can.
Katy Balls speaks to Oscar Edmondson and Paul Goodman on the latest Coffee House Shots podcast about Kemi’s performance so far as leader of the Conservative Party:
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