How to solve a problem like Reform? The Tories have been scratching their heads on the matter since their rather disastrous election result in July. And yet it appears that the Conservatives are, er, still pretty split on the best way forward.
Former Conservative leader John Major has told the Beeb that a move to the right in a bid to reel back Reform voters would be a mistake. He’s not alone, with many of the Tory leadership candidates also having expressed scepticism about a move to the right. James Cleverly has in the past warned his party not to do a ‘counter-productive’ deal with Farage, with GB News even reporting that a WhatsApp group chat named ‘James Cleverly for Leader’ featured comments warning against shifts to ‘Reform stances’ and the ‘extreme Right’. Tom Tugendhat has insisted he wants ‘to reform the Conservative party’, not to ‘become Reform’. Robert Jenrick stated pre-election how he ‘shares the frustrations’ of Tory voters moving to Reform – yet labelled Farage’s group as a ‘pie-in-the-sky’ party championing ‘La La Land fantasy politics’. But now it appears that the fourth leadership runner, Kemi Badenoch, may have other ideas…
Speaking to GB News, Badenoch has offered something of an olive branch to those right-wingers who had abandoned her party in this year’s national poll. Reaching out to those who had jumped ship to the Farage-founded party at the election, Badenoch insisted: ‘Many of the people who voted Reform were lifelong Tory voters.’ She went on: ‘I think one of the mistakes we made was making Reform voters think that they were not our people. They are our people.’
Turning more specifically to the party’s bigwigs, Badenoch lamented the loss of Lee Anderson – now one of the group’s five MPs – and blasted the decision to remove the whip from him over alleged Islamophobic remarks. Calling the suspension of the red wall Rottweiler a moment ‘that lit the touchpaper’, Badenoch claims she told the Tory chief whip: ‘Do not do this. This is a bad, bad decision.’ She added: ‘Basically we are saying “we don’t want these kind of people”, to get them out.’ It’s certainly a sentiment that one Nigel Farage has capitalised on…
Yet about Reform’s top dog himself, Badenoch was a little less complimentary. All the rest of her leadership rivals have made clear that they would refuse Farage’s entry to the Tory party – and this Conservative leadership contender doubled down on the stance she’d adopted in June. ‘I think he is a disruptor,’ Badenoch responded. ‘But he has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative party, so I think that’s probably a no.’ Bad luck, Nige.
While her comments may help Badenoch gain support from disillusioned Tory voters – her one-time parliamentary private secretary and ex-MP Alexander Stafford insisted in July she was the only candidate who could ‘slay the Reform dragon’ – she still has to get through hustings at her party conference this month and corral the support of paid-up party membership to win the party leadership. The race is very much still on…
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