Brian Monteith: Could backing Reform UK hand Starmer the keys to Downing Street?

Ignore Conservative spin about last week’s two by-election losses. They cannot be put down to unhappiness with the performance of the departed MPs. After all, nobody was being asked to vote for Chris Pincher or Nadine Dories to go back to the House of Commons.

The two record breaking defeats in Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth were as bad as it gets, and the coming general election next year (or even as late as January 2025) looks like also being as bad as it gets. In Mid-Beds the swing to Labour was 20.5 per cent, in Tamworth it was 23.9 per cent.

The phrase “existential threat” is quite often used in politics, so much so that its ubiquity is in danger of helping it lose its necessary sense of foreboding. Yet an existential threat is indeed what those by-election results suggest for the Conservative Party.

While both those seats are likely to return to the Conservative fold, even if only because higher voter turnout will most likely bring back Conservative supporters who stayed away, there will be no such comforts for hundreds (yes, hundreds) of other seats with majorities that require only modest swings.

While Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won an overall majority of eighty back in December 2019, the task for Keir Starmer is greater, he needs to win an additional 124 seats to gain a majority against all other parties. Back in June, independent analysis of over 4,000 voters in key battleground seats suggested Labour’s chances were on a knife edge, predicting Labour winning 123-125 additional constituencies.

June is now looking a long time ago. The Conservatives winning the Uxbridge by-election in July now looks a mere blip caused by the special circumstances of proposed ULEZ driving restrictions and fines. Since then Labour has won Rutherglen and West Hamilton from the SNP with a convincing majority, and now has a spring in its step. There was no conference bounce in the polls for Rishi Sunak while Labour is maintaining its lead in the region of 20 per cent.

Add to this turmoil the reports that letters of no confidence in Rishi Sunak are flying in to the Conservative 1922 Committee from Tory backbenchers and that the Chancellor has decided not to stand for re-election in his constituency and there is a maelstrom of crises and dissent gathering that can only drain remaining confidence from possible supporters. Nobody votes for MPs displaying serial disloyalty or behaving like headless chickens.

Add to the mix there may yet have to be another recall by-election in the Wellingborough constituency, after its MP, Peter Bone, was suspended by the Conservatives following the recommendation of a six week suspension from the House of Commons by the Standards Committee – and we can see an acrid pall following Sunak’s party into next year too.

Ironically, the Scottish Conservatives might yet offer a bright spot of relief from Sunak’s self-imposed descent into a bloodbath of electoral retribution. By choosing to make the next general election about “independence” Humza Yousaf’s SNP could find seats he might have managed to hold on to on a good day, might instead swing to the strongest British party – and in some cases that will be Douglas Ross’s Conservatives.

While in England Labour might win seats by simply not being the Tories – in Scotland Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats might win seats by simply not being the SNP.

Yet for all this, most of the polling and expert analysts miss the single most important event that came out of last Thursday’s by-elections – the performance of the Reform UK party. In both constituencies the vote for Reform was larger than Labour’s winning majority.

As I have argued before, Boris Johnson did not win his eighty-seat majority alone, he was helped by Nigel Farage agreeing to not stand Brexit Party candidates in the seats where Conservatives were the incumbents. Further, by still standing in pro-Leave Labour seats – essentially the Red Wall seats in the North of England – the Labour vote was reduced and Conservatives were able to come through the middle and win.

The Brexit Party has since rebranded as Reform UK and under the leadership of Richard Tice (supported by Nigel Farage as its President) is fully committed to standing in every mainland British constituency next time round. They say, and I believe them, they will not stand down for Conservatives again. As far as they are concerned there is little difference between Sunak’s Conservatives and Starmer’s Labour and their aim is to build up Reform as a party over a number of general elections, not just the next one.

There is ample evidence many Conservative supporters now feel homeless – having seen the party they voted for raising taxes, interfering with personal freedoms, betraying Brexit, and failing to deal with legal and illegal immigration – which is why last Thursday so many stayed at home.

The risk for Sunak’s Conservatives now is a combination of possible supporters staying at home – or, not being able to vote Labour, turning to Ricard Tice’s Reform UK. In the 2005 general election nearly thirty seats in England stayed with Labour thanks to the votes UKIP scooped up that could have helped turn those constituencies Conservative. In 2024 we could see history repeat itself where Reform helps ensure Conservatives trail second – yet without Tice’s party wining a single seat itself.

Were Reform to make a breakthrough and pull of even an isolated victory it could augur change to the stilted duopoly of two centrist collectivist parties with more in common than what divides them. To achieve that might need Nigel Farage to be a candidate, but he shows no signs of wishing to do so, despite much teasing of Conservatives in the media.

It’s now Starmer’s election to lose – can he snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?