Over twenty points behind in every poll, set for a record defeat and staring years of political oblivion in the face, you’d be forgiven for thinking it couldn’t get any worse for the Conservative Party.
Except earlier this month it did.
Enter Nigel Farage: darling of the Brexit-supporting right-wing, new leader of Reform UK, and now eight-time General Election candidate. As the centre ground crumbles to Labour, the right look likely to crumble to this relatively new upstart party – with Farage the driving force.
With only one MP after the recent dissolution of Parliament (Lee Anderson following his defection from the Tories), it would seem, on face value, that Reform aren’t a real threat – but you better believe they are.
When judging success for this party – previously known as the Brexit Party – it’s important to look at the wider context and to note there are various factors in play – not just parliamentary representation. Farage himself has made a range of statements that suggest the party aren’t looking towards having Commons influence in the first instance; rather, their main aim is to put pressure on the Tories to force a more right-wing agenda.
Under the current system of voting, it’s unlikely Reform will get many seats, but as with all parties who aren’t the top two, they can still exert considerable pressure.
Farage had been making noises about returning to the Tories to steer them in the direction he wants but, instead, it appears he’s decided the best method to do that is bully the Conservatives back to the right via the medium of his new party.
And it seems to be working.
After Farage announced he was to stand as a candidate for Reform, membership – and press coverage – of the party shot up. His whole man-of-the-people persona appears to still carry huge appeal to working voters. Polls this week now even have the 60-year-old down as favourite to win the Clacton seat he is standing for.
Indeed, the fact this is the constituency he chose to stand in is noteworthy in itself. It was the first seat to turn to UKIP – who Farage previously led – when Tory Douglas Carswell defected in 2014. Carswell, himself, went on to win a by-election under the UKIP bracket – the first time this had been done.
In the 2016 EU referendum, meanwhile, almost 70% of the constituency voted to leave, one of the highest Brexit votes in the country.
Now, that voting history and Farage’s own popularity make it seem like this Tory seaside seat could well fall to Reform.
It would be a huge fillip for the party which had struggled under previous leader Richard Tice (a man with an overwhelming sense of poshness).
Now the question becomes: will the results of this election give them the power to influence wider British politics?
When you’re trying to appeal to the populist right and The Sun doesn’t even lend you their support, you know you’ve messed up.
Despite the clear impact of Reform on the Tories, it has to be said that the blue rosette party have got themselves into this state themselves.
Partygate, Liz Truss (need I say more?) and a questionable response to the cost-of-living crisis have made it a less than successful parliamentary term for the ruling party – which now resembles a marathon runner hitting ‘the wall’ after 14 years of tumultuous tenure.
Ever since Partygate emerged in 2022, they’ve been behind in the polls and had public opinion pretty much exclusively against them, which has had a stark impact on both council elections and the general election campaign.
Big business has turned to Labour with Iceland boss Richard Walker even switching from being a prospective Tory candidate to supporting Labour. The Tories have also lost the newspapers with The Sun yet to declare but offering plenty of praise to leader Sir Keir Starmer. That really says it all! When you’re trying to appeal to the populist right and The Sun doesn’t even lend you their support, you know you’ve messed up.
Even some Tory MPs have turned towards Farage. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Marco Longhi have both praised him on social media. When your own side are cheerleading another team, it’s grim indeed.
So, is there any way the Tories can recover from this? In short, it’s looking unlikely.
The Tory election campaign’s lurch to the right smacks of desperation and is a surprisingly introspective acknowledgement of impending doom. There’s a strong sense of the party being a sinking ship, with the number of Tory MPs standing down now exceeding the same number from the 1997 election, and we all know how that went.
As with that Labour landslide, there’s a belief among many Tories that their problems may need several years in the electoral wilderness to fix – and Farage’s campaign against the party he was once a part of is only going to further that belief.
We could even see a similar situation to that of the 1993 Canadian federal election when the ruling Progressive Conservative party slumped to just two seats, sparking a major political realignment and the eventual death of the party.
We could even see the formation of a new centre-right party further splintering the old Tory vote.
Reform’s popularity isn’t only going to impact the right wing, though.
It may well also have an effect on the fate of Labour.
How so? Because throughout the whole campaign, the Tories have been saying a vote for Reform is a vote to put Labour in Downing Street. A Reform surge in many seats is likely to hit the Tory vote, allowing Labour in. This will mean the Tories move to the right, allowing Labour mop up the gap they left in the centre – and, thus, stay in power for longer with their broad church.
The impact of Reform may well, therefore, go beyond just this election as Labour’s majority increases from Reform’s vote-splitting and the political spectrum changes for years to come.
How will this play out?
The Tories – consious that they wnat to win back those Remain voters – are likely to shift to the right becoming a party dominated by the likes of Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch.
This, however, will leave a gap in the centre-right ground with many moderate, One-Nation, small-c conservatives potentially abandoning the party after the shift for either the Liberal Democrats or – whisper it – the broad church of Starmer’s Labour. We could even see the formation of a new centre-right party further splintering the old Tory vote.
If this new party doesn’t happen, however, and the centre-right turn instead to Labour then this will have a massive impact on the red rosette party too.
There is already disquiet on the left of Labour with what many feeling the party’s current direction is away from its socialist principles. Should Starmer attempt to woo more centerists, then that may well splinter his own broad church coalition on the left – and lead to the creation of a new leftist party, possibly set up by the likes of Zarah Sultana. Jeremy Corbyn would, of course, by their spiritual leader.
In short: the next few years could be highly unpredictable.
The extent of this change remains to be seen, but it’s clear that this election has the potential to change the fate of the Tory party and British politics as a whole, for a generation or more.
