John Oxley: One-sided infatuation with the dream of a pact with Reform is doing our party serious harm

John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.

Anyone who has laboured under a school-boy crush knows the pain of unreciprocated feelings. For the worst afflicted, it deals a double blow: both the pain of rejection and the stasis of fantasy. Rather than accepting the realities of the situation and moving on, the moper squanders other opportunities whilst waiting for a fantasy to come true.

Now nearing its 200th anniversary, the Conservative Party should have grown out of such things, yet it seems stuck in a one-way relationship – with Reform.

With our party struggling in the polls and Farage’s outfit surging, there is an obvious temptation to talk about “uniting the right”. A glance at the numbers suggests that us plus them would amount to an unassailable lead. Consequently, talk of pacts and mergers abounds.

The problem is that the theory fails to withstand contact with reality. On a deeper inspection, the Conservatives’ courting of Reform looks entirely one-sided, both among voters and leaders. Combining it seems to have little benefit for the Tories.

Across recent elections, a pattern is emerging that should be very alarming for the Conservative Party. In places where Reform looks to be the stronger horse, our voters are switching decisively behind them. That favour is not, however, being returned when the Conservatives have the best chance. This creates a lose-lose situation for Conservative candidates.

In Runcorn, for example, Tory voters appeared to shift their support behind the Reform candidate to replace the Labour MP. The Conservative vote share halved compared with last summer, with our candidates going from a narrow third place in July to miles adrift in May. The same was repeated in many Labour-held council areas – precipitous drops in Tory votes and the sudden rise of Reform winners.

This pattern would allow the right to challenge in areas it has never touched before. The problem is that it is not reciprocated in places where the Tories should be winning. In the last couple of weeks, election results have demonstrated this in detail.

In Carshalton and West Sussex, a pair of by-elections saw strong Liberal Democrat defences. In both, the Conservatives were the prominent challengers, with a history of finishing in close second place. Rather than the right-wing votes combining for a win, however, we lost a large chunk of votes to Reform, and the Liberal Democrats romped home.

This matches patterns from the local elections, where both Labour and Lib Dems were able to split the field between us and Reform. The tactical voting between Reform and Conservative candidates only seems to go one way.

Broader polling reinforces this trend. Conservative voters have a higher opinion of Reform and more willingness to vote for them than vice versa. Our voters like Farage far more than Reform voters like Kemi.

In a recent YouGov poll, 60 per cent of our current voters and just 38 per cent of our 2024 supporters said they thought Badenoch would make a better prime minister than Farage; 80 per cent of Reform voters were loyal to their leader on the same question. Many Conservatives are eying up the new party, but few are glancing back.

All of these data point to a bigger problem for those who urge a pact between us and Reform. It proves that voters are not Lego bricks that can be easily stacked together by parties. There is no guarantee that any attempt to unite the two parties would combine both its strengths. An alliance or merger may well end up being less than the sum of the parts, as voters refused to be sorted into a new entity.

Really, it questions the whole premise of an alliance. Based on the last election, a pact would see Reform step aside in all but the handful of seats they hold and the few dozen where they came second to Labour. They would, per July 2024, be the junior partner in any agreement.

Yet if their voters don’t like the Tories and don’t switch to them when it matters (as everything now suggests), this idea doesn’t work for either party. The Conservatives couldn’t be sure of picking up support, while Reform may not think they need a deal at all. Indeed, by 2029, they may see an association with us as a weakness rather than a strength.

Reform already understands this, and it shows the telling, unreciprocated relationship between the parties. Farage is quite clear; he is far more interested in supplanting us than courting us. He wants to continue his march against the Conservative Party and then turn on the Labour Party.

The by-election results suggest he is succeeding in this. His policy positions increasingly demonstrate he is interested in something different from “uniting the right”.

Reform is not just some disaffected wing of the Conservative Party. It is a new phenomenon, more akin to the populist, post-ideological parties on the European continent, such as Italy’s Five Star Movement. Their position against the child benefit cap nods towards this – a party of freer spending, not fiscal restraint.

Similarly, their enthusiasm for nationalising water utilities points to another area for the state to take more control. As much as Farage and co. like to ape the mantle of Thatcherism, much of their economic platform is pure populism, shrinking the state where they think their voters like it but still prepared to expand it too massively. Most analysis of their broader economic policy suggests it’s a boondoggle that fails to add up.

It’s tempting to see the Conservatives and Reform as a right-wing bloc that can come together should electoral circumstances make it advantageous. The public, however, doesn’t seem to see it that way, and nor does Reform. In terms of both policy and appeal, they are aiming to be something different from us and to defeat and replace us. Failing to draw distinctions between Conservatism and Reform will only enhance this by making our voters feel more comfortable lending their votes while we get nothing in return.

The Conservative Party should not have a one-sided relationship with Reform, nor should we try to position ourselves as the “diet Reform” alternative. Farage and his colleagues have a different worldview, different policies, and different priorities than we do. The voters are sensing that. We should not be complacent about it and should be fighting to defeat the insurgent party rather than accommodating it.

The voting patterns are starting to show something very worrying: not a united right, but tactical switching that sees the Conservatives as losers every time.

Rather than hoping an alliance can be our resurrection, it is essential to take the fight to them. We need to be a clear alternative and focus on beating Reform just as we would any other political opponent. Sitting, pining for Reform’s popularity will not be enough. Nor will hoping for an alliance which might never come or work.

The results that have already accumulated demonstrate the naivety of viewing Reform as a potential ally. Survival will only come from fighting them off.