James Cleverly, the first official Tory leadership contender, has today ruled out a merger with Reform if he becomes Tory leader in November. After announcing his candidacy in an op-ed for the Daily Telegraph, the shadow home secretary was quick to get across the airwaves today. Cleverly secured a prime slot on the Beeb’s Today programme, and it wasn’t long before the former cabinet minister was interrogated on the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
‘What do you do about Reform as a party, not just Nigel Farage, but Reform? You’re quite split, aren’t you?’ Justin Webb quizzed the former home secretary. Cleverly was having none of it. ‘The Conservative Party doesn’t do mergers,’ he replied robustly:
The simple truth is that we have got a series of principles. We believe in civil liberty, we believe in free enterprise, we believe in efficient but modest size of the state, lower taxes. Those are our principles. And what we need to do is we need to expand our base of support.
How interesting. Cleverly believes the Conservative party has to ‘present an offer of unity, security and prosperity’ if it wants to pull back disillusioned voters – but what does his party membership think? In a recent YouGov poll, Tory members were rather closely tied on the issue of a Reform merger. 47 per cent are in favour of joining with the Farage-founded right-wing group, with their opposition just outnumbering them by 1 per cent. Mr S wonders how many of Cleverly’s potential rivals agree with him on the matter – not least Suella Braverman who has found herself at the centre of rumours that she might even defect to Reform…
Listen to the clip here:
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