How Tories can defeat Reform and save UK from catastrophe – if they change to this leader

The Conservatives need to stop making the same mistake on immigration – before it destroys them

Imagine, for a moment, you are Kemi Badenoch, charged with restoring the fortunes of the Conservatives – supposedly the world's oldest and most successful political party – following the greatest defeat in their history. What would you do?

Comparing the last two UK general election results suggests a possible answer. In 2019, the Conservatives received nearly 14 million votes; last year, they won about 6.8 million. In contrast, the Brexit party’s 644,000 votes six years ago soared to 4.1 million for its Reform UK incarnation.

So it’s easy to suppose that if Tories can win over Reform’s voters with a ‘Reform-lite’ pitch – and hang onto their existing supporters – they could easily surpass Labour’s 2024 total of 9.7 million and be back in business.

Nigel Farage, seen visiting a tattoo parlour while campaigning in Cambridgeshire ahead of the recent local elections, has made clear he wants to destroy the Conservative party (Picture: Joe Giddens) | PA

Oblivion beckons

Unfortunately for Badenoch, politics is rarely that simple and the results of the English local elections should be seen as a flashing red warning signal that their current strategy to see off Reform is not working and, what’s more, charging blindly on will only lead to one place: oblivion.

Judging by Badenoch’s blink count during her interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, she may be starting to see that light, even if she can’t quite admit it, publicly or to herself.

READ MORE: Why true Scottish Conservatives should avoid Nigel Farage like the plague

Clearly, opposition to large-scale immigration is a powerful political force that some politicians fear, but others regard as an opportunity. In government, the Tories’ rhetoric suggested they were tough on immigration, but the numbers rose to record levels.

This explains why Reform, a party with few resources, has become such a large political force so quickly – the Conservatives effectively campaigned against their own policy and for Reform’s. Millions responded by supporting the party they thought would deliver what had been promised, for years, by Theresa ‘hostile environment’ May, Boris ‘fly them to Rwanda’ Johnson and Rishi ‘stop the boats’ Sunak.

The trouble for the Tories is that those voters, quite understandably, no longer trust them to deliver, based on the evidence. Labour risks falling into a similar trap, of talking tough on immigration, while letting in large numbers of people.

READ MORE: The reason why Reform UK is set to be Scotland's third-largest party is simple

Stop agreeing with Reform

But if copying Reform is not the way to save the Conservatives, what is? Again, the answer is simple: stop agreeing with them and start disagreeing, with considerable vigour. The first fights should focus on their more obvious shortcomings – the dubious qualities of some of the recently elected councillors, their questionable attitude towards the NHS, and their lack of seriousness about the economy.

However, ultimately, defeating Reform will require a pitched battle on the field of their choosing: immigration. Doing that would necessarily require the Tories to have a different leader and, fortunately, they have just such a person waiting in the wings. James Cleverly has spoken in pragmatic terms about immigration and privately concluded the Rwanda scheme was “bats***”, according to reports.

With him as leader, a case could be made for ‘sensible’ immigration policies coupled with strong border controls, while pointing out that Reform’s ridiculous talk of ‘net zero’ migration would have a devastating economic effect. It’s what the Conservatives should have done all along but, following Brexit, they found themselves enthralled by the voting-winning power of anti-immigration rhetoric.

This stance would receive considerable support from the business community and present Reform voters, actual and potential, with a stark choice: trust Brexit’s biggest fans and risk making hard times worse because of a vague antipathy towards migrants or choose the duller but safer and more experienced Tories. Keir Starmer’s presence in 10 Downing Street suggests charisma is not the political asset it’s cracked up to be.

What are the Conservatives for?

Voters who don’t like immigration need to be repeatedly confronted by an uncomfortable truth: it has become vitally important to their own livelihoods. It wouldn’t work with all of them, but many would have second thoughts – if a serious effort is made to persuade them.

On Sunday, former Conservative Education Secretary Justine Greening told Kuenssberg: “This version of the Conservative party, which we have seen over the last decade, which has tried to out-Reform Reform, is finished and it will need to reinvent itself.”

And she added: “There are some really practical questions facing the Conservative party and I think more fundamentally the question of what is the point of the Conservative party now. If we can’t find an answer to that, I think we shouldn’t assume things won’t continue to get worse.”

The Tories’ major selling point should be what it has, at least until recently, always been: a strong economy. And, like it or not, a strong economy requires migrants.

In the first three months of last year, 21 per cent of the UK’s workforce were born overseas – so more than a fifth of the people whose taxes paid for public services, the defence of this country, the state pension and so on were migrants. Most come to the UK to work for a few years, then leave. If this flow of workers dries up, the consequences for the economy would be catastrophic.

Demise of liberal democracy?

Liberal Conservatives need to reclaim their party. If they cannot, they have two options: join people like former Tory Jamie Green MSP and defect to the Liberal Democrats or abandon their values and stay quiet in the naïve hope that all this will somehow pass.

In the US, Donald Trump has basically turned the Republicans into his own personality cult. If Nigel Farage succeeds in turning Reform into the main right-wing party, with the Conservatives reduced to nodding dogs in a junior, supporting role, the result could be the demise of liberal democracy itself.

This is the system of government that helped build modern Britain which, despite its problems, is still the world’s sixth largest economy, among the most free nations, and, believe it or not, the 20th happiest on the planet. Things may not have gone well since the 2008 financial crash, but with hard-right, ideological populists in charge, they would be much, much worse.