STEPHEN GLOVER: If Reform and the Tories let Labour again in they might by no means be forgiven. When I requested Farage a couple of pact his reply was very revealing
Have there ever been two political parties in modern British politics that think alike on so many issues as Reform UK and the Tories?
Some will say the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Liberals (as they were then called) were equally similar in the 1980s. Well, maybe. They formed an electoral alliance, and eventually merged.
Sounding spookily like Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch has just announced that the Tories will ditch Labour’s 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars if her party wins the next election. To put it mildly, she has reconsidered her erstwhile enthusiasm for Net Zero.
The Tory leader can see that Ed Miliband’s war against petrol and diesel cars will open up the British market to imported Chinese electric vehicles and kill off what remains of our car industry. Besides, why should people be forced to buy electric cars, which are usually more expensive and far less green than is claimed?
Kemi is simply being pragmatic and showing common sense. Even the European Commission in Brussels is reportedly on the verge of deferring its 2035 ban on the sale of combustion-engine cars in order to save the EU car industry from annihilation at the hands of the Chinese.
The Conservatives’ change of heart on electric cars puts them in the same camp as Reform, which has long campaigned against net zero. On yet one more policy, the two parties are virtually indistinguishable.
In recent months, Kemi has steadily moved her party to the Right on numerous issues. There was the pledge – echoing that of Reform – to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights so that the UK can control its own borders.
Her plan to remove 750,000 illegal immigrants within five years sounded almost as robust – some would say draconian – as Nigel Farage’s ideas. Both parties are committed to slashing legal and illegal immigration.
Sounding spookily like Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch has just announced that the Tories will ditch Labour’s 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars if her party wins the next election
The Conservatives’ change of heart on electric cars puts them in the same camp as Reform, which has long campaigned against Net Zero
Both parties want to increase defence spending. Both parties intend to reduce welfare payments drastically. Both parties grumble about Labour’s mounting tax burden, though Nigel Farage has abandoned a manifesto pledge to cut £90 billion in taxes.
There are still one or two differences, of course. For example, Farage supported Labour’s lifting of the two-child benefit cap because he wants to encourage people to have more children.
Badenoch fiercely opposed the change.
All in all, though, the two parties are strikingly in harmony on many issues. Reform has become more realistic without really shifting its ground. The Tories have moved Rightwards and have embraced policies that were considered too extreme by the administrations of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.
What is remarkable is that Kemi has accomplished this transformation without attracting public criticism from the Tory wets. This may be because they recognise that their party is weak and can’t afford another display of in-fighting. Or they may reflect that Kemi’s main rival, Robert Jenrick, is even more Right-wing.
At all events, she and her team have in marketing terms ‘re-branded’ the Conservative Party to a significant degree in a very short period of time. This hasn’t led to a further slump in the polls. Mrs Badenoch’s own ratings have enjoyed a modest uptick.
Kemi is so confident of her new position on the Right that she is ‘WhatsApp buddies’ with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who has previously been described as a neo-fascist by her political opponents.
The two women enjoyed a ‘pre-Christmas hangout’ in Rome, where they bonded over a shared admiration for Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton.
In a sane world it would obviously make no sense for a Tory party led by Kemi Badenoch and for Nigel Farage’s Reform to slug it out in a general election, thereby taking votes from each other so that parties of the Left could slip through the middle.
And yet it must be conceded that, despite the Tories and Reform increasingly resembling two peas in a pod, there are formidable obstacles to an electoral pact that would see off a Labour-Green-Lib Dem coalition.
On Reform’s side, there persists a feeling that they are the future, and won’t need any help from the discredited and still toxic Tories to form a government. Nigel Farage also doesn’t rate Kemi Badenoch and has, very possibly wrongly, forecast that she will be ousted before the next election.
Moreover, many Reform apparatchiks (including some ex-Tories) actively dislike or despise the Conservatives. They see sparkling future political careers for themselves in their brave new party.
On the Tory side, there is still a feeling that they are the natural party of the Right, that Reform are a bunch of upstarts interspersed with the occasional screwball, and that sooner or later they will be restored to their rightful dominance.
These positions are entrenched, and this being so there is virtually no prospect of an accommodation between the two parties in the near future, even though they agree about so many things.
Yet I believe that Nigel Farage is both a patriot and a realist. He wants above all to rid our country of this disastrous Labour Government (which will probably be even worse once the seals of office are wrested from Starmer’s and Reeves’ trembling hands, and handed to Andy Burnham and/or Angela Rayner).
Earlier this year, I asked Farage whether he could imagine a coalition with the Tories in any circumstances. He replied that if he were to say ‘Yes’, he’d be hounded out of his party. I thought this an interesting response. He was saying that a pact with the Tories was impractical rather than ideologically problematic.
But what if it were the only way of defeating Labour? A couple of weeks ago, Reform’s leader reportedly told donors that he expects his party to do an election deal with the Tories. Farage quickly denied making any such comments, insisting that ‘sometimes people hear what they want to’.
He can’t afford to weaken the resolve of his own troops, or risk their wrath. But in his heart Farage is a Thatcherite who hates socialism, and I am sure that if an accommodation with the Tories were the only way of getting rid of Labour, he would sense where his duty lay.
That moment is some time away. Of course, if Reform UK were consistently to poll more than 35 per cent in the months before the next election, such a moment would never arrive.
But that degree of electoral supremacy seems to me increasingly unlikely, not least because the Tories are making mild advances. I suspect the oldest political party in the world is gravely weakened but not finished.
I can’t predict whether there will be a pre-election pact between Reform and the Conservative Party, or a post-election one. I can’t even be sure whether there will be a deal at all.
I simply know that, agreeing as they now do about almost everything, the leaders of Reform and the Tories would never be forgiven if their personal differences or political ambitions enabled the Left to rule this country for five more years – and finally to ruin it.
