THE BIG READ: Farage is going for Labour. Now Reform and the Tories should become the best of frenemies.

The next Conservative leader should ape Nigel Farage's new tactic by not getting fixated about him and simply pounding this awful Labour Government every single day instead.

Photo by Monika Simeonova on Unsplash

AT the start of September I wrote an article on here in which I sought to challenge conventional wisdom about an allegedly unavoidable “fight to the death” between the Tories and Reform.

I pointed out that the two parties would do much better when it comes to Westminster seats (local government is a different kettle of fish) to take an opposite approach.

An organic, informal and undeclared non-aggression pact similar to that arrived at between Labour and the Lib Dems in the run-up to the last election would serve both parties much better than would seeking to eviscerate each other, I argued.

With Reform runner-up to Labour in 89 seats mainly in the working class Red Wall and South Wales valleys, and the Tories runner up in a couple of hundred more – including market town seats and traditional bellwether marginals – this made much more sense to me. Ignore each other and just pile into Labour every day, I suggested.

You can read the post here (NB there is a paywall halfway down as I prioritise my paid subscribers because they are the ones whose support affords me the opportunity to dedicate time to ensuring this Substack is the best and most informative I can make it. So please consider becoming one if you currently aren’t but value what I write).

The day I published this post, I received a message from someone very senior in Reform telling me: “Great Substack today on Tories v Reform.”

While I don’t claim to be an all-pervading guru of the political right, I do therefore derive some satisfaction about at least having had a positive influence on events since then.

Because this is largely what has happened. In Reform’s case in particular, it has just released a full-throated assault on Labour’s disastrous early record – more reminiscent of a US-style attack ad than a traditional British party political broadcast.

( https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1843344752613437699 )

This makes perfect sense. In general terms, it is much easier to imagine that millions of 2024 Labour general election voters are now up for grabs for Reform than that millions of Tory ones are. The voters who stuck with the Tories in their dreadful nadir in early July can surely be assumed to pretty much form an irreducible core vote.

In specific targeting terms it also makes sense for Reform. Of 98 Reform second places in July, 89 were achieved in seats that Labour won. And everything that has happened since then – the attack on pensioner incomes, the “Two Tier Keir” approach to disorder, the freebie-grabbing greed, giving away sovereign British territory, soft pedalling on illegal immigration, the prisoner early release scheme – suggests that Labour is there for the taking in post-industrial, working class constituencies.

Both Nigel Farage at Reform and whoever is the next Tory leader should and - now hopefully will – resist media-led invitations to engage in political mud-wrestling with each other.

In Farage’s case, the optimal reply when asked to further disparage the Tories would run something like this: