The debate over a Reform-Tory pact was always destined to resume. Why? First, there is already a slow merger going on between the two parties: 21 current or former Conservative MPs, including Danny Kruger, Jake Berry and Nadine Dorries, have defected to Reform over the last year, with three more only this week.
Second, while Reform has led every opinion poll for nine months, its performance is not strong enough for it to be certain of winning a majority at the next general election. The party’s ratings have fallen in recent surveys and waves of tactical voting meant it lost the Hamilton and Caerphilly by-elections. Meanwhile, under a more confident Kemi Badenoch, the Tories’ standing has begun to improve. So is a deal inevitable?
That’s what the Financial Times reports Nigel Farage has told donors, with the Reform leader suggesting either a pact or a merger is on the horizon. “I would never do a deal with a party that I don’t trust. No deals, just a reverse takeover. A deal with them as they are would cost us votes.” That’s a message underlined by one of his closest aides who tells the New Statesman of a pact: “Over my dead body”.
Reform, which believes it received insufficient credit for standing down in Tory seats in 2019 (as the Brexit Party), maintains that it can win a majority by squeezing what remains of the Conservative vote at a general election.
And here’s the key point to keep in mind: pact or no pact, what matters for the general election result is whether the right is more divided than the left. On that front, Labour has cause for concern.
A recent poll by More in Common (see below) showed an important shift: Conservative voters are now far more likely to name Labour rather than Reform as the party they would vote against at an election (by 59 per cent to 18 per cent).
That shows clear potential for a conservative version of the progressive tactical voting that aided Tony Blair’s landslides in 1997 and 2001 and Keir Starmer’s in 2024. No pact has ever been required for Labour and the Lib Dems to demolish the Conservatives and no pact is required for Reform and the Tories to do the same to Starmer.
That’s why talk of Farage unifying the right will intensify the conversation already happening in Labour circles: who can unite the left? Even as Starmer has dramatized the threat from Reform, progressive fragmentation has only grown: Labour has now lost almost a third of its 2024 vote to the Greens and the Lib Dems. Rather than the spectre of a Reform-Tory pact, Starmer’s biggest headache is how to change that – and fast.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
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