Ben Cope: Conservatives won’t beat Reform UK with facts, it’s feelings that matter

Ben Cope is a political commentator.

During a viral TV debate in 2015, transgender broadcaster Zoey Tur threatened conservative pundit Ben Shapiro for refusing to use her preferred gender pronouns.

Shapiro responded: “forget about the disrespect. The facts don’t care about your feelings.”

The line became a rallying cry for conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic, aimed at progressives seen to be prioritising emotion over reason.

Fast forward ten years and that illiberal Left is dead as a political force. The vibe shifted, Donald Trump regained the White House, and Keir Starmer is forced to talk tough on migration. The threat to the Conservative Party’s natural centre-right home now comes from the Right, not the Left.

Nigel Farage’s Reform has surged to a 7-point poll lead, the Conservatives have slumped to fourth, and recent council elections foreshadow an annihilation to come. Panicking, the Conservatives are turning “the facts don’t care about your feelings” guns on Reform, latching onto critiques of their economic policies. Though reasonable, it’s a losing strategy. Times have changed and the Conservatives need a winning vision – fast.

In the wake of Reform’s council election triumph, the economic establishment looked in horror at policies which suddenly seemed to have a serious chance of being enacted. Raising the income tax personal allowance to £20,000 and the higher rate threshold to £70,000, scrapping stamp duty below £750,000 and raising the defence budget to three percent of GDP. Taxes slashed and spending through the roof. Tax expert Dan Neidle estimated that Reform’s 2024 manifesto would amount to £82bn in unfunded spending, equivalent to the entire education budget.

We’ve seen this movie before.

Liz Truss’ mini budget sent gilt yields flying, mortgage rates spiralling, and, if it was left to continue, would have caused runaway inflation. Reform’s proposals go beyond that. Paul Johnson, the Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, wrote that the Party’s borrowing would be “on a scale that might make Liz Truss blush.” The Economist dubbed it “double-Trussed.”

Seeing a chink in Reform’s armour, influential Conservatives have seized on Reform’s unserious economic plans to accuse them of being unready for power. Conservative MP Neil O’Brien wrote in City A.M. that “Reform would put the UK on the path to financial ruin” and that “disaster is on the horizon,” while the Policy Exchange’s James Vitali argued in The Critic that “Reform’s economic policies constitute a patchwork of confusion” and that Tories “need to target these weaknesses.”

But as important as factchecking may be, it doesn’t win elections.

Just ask the Remain campaigners who endlessly debunked the “£350 million for the NHS” claim – only to lose anyway. The Brexit vote was won on emotion, not evidence. Similarly, Conservative rebuttals of Reform’s populist pledges with “Um, actually” factchecks miss the point.

Elections are won with feelings, not facts. Rational economic critiques will bounce off Reform.

Technocracy alone can’t carry a political movement. Voters don’t reward the cleverest spreadsheet; they back the leader who understands their frustrations and promises something better. Given how much some Conservatives enjoyed the culture wars, it’s surprising they are confusing managerial competence with moral clarity. Reform is offering dejected voters something new: the sense that someone is finally on their side, even if the maths doesn’t add up.

The Conservatives need to fight Reform at their own game.

Not through imitation – as Robert Jenrick appears intent on – but by providing an alternative vision. Reform’s economic illiteracy and the Labour government’s faltering growth agenda creates white space for a Conservative Party that takes the economy seriously. But dry talk of spending, deficits, unfunded pledges leave voters cold. In their place, their emotional cousins: meritocracy, aspiration and a positive vision of the future need to take centre stage.

The Conservatives can’t wait for Kemi Badenoch’s ‘Renewal 2030’. There isn’t time.

And the work done by the progress and abundance movements in both the UK and the US means there are already dozens of oven ready policies to deliver the change we need, anyway. But we can’t rely on policy wonks to win the public over. Politicians need to inject the emotion.

If the Conservative Party is to have a future, it must do more than factcheck.

It should inspire.