Poll after poll shows Conservative support on less than 20 per cent.
Thanks to the cliff-edge effect in the electoral system, we’d lose most of the 121 seats we clung on to last year. In short, we’re on the brink of extinction as a major political party.
Unless our ratings improve, our options for survival are limited. We could try to concentrate our support geographically. That’s how the Lib Dems managed to win 11 per cent of the seats last year with 12 per cent the votes. That’s a remarkably proportional result for a smaller party in a first-past-the-post election. But how — and indeed where — could we pull off the same trick?
A more achievable way of saving a significant number of Tory seats would be to form an electoral pact with one or more other parties. It’s happened before in our history, so why shouldn’t it happen again? Back in January, I attempted to sketch out the outline of a deal with Reform UK — but, since then, the relative positions of the two Right-of-centre parties has altered dramatically. The polls now show Reform ahead of us by a double digit margin.
Historically, Nigel Farage’s attitude to the Conservative Party has wavered between kiss or kill, embrace or replace. There’s less doubt about his intentions now. As Kemi Badenoch continually points out he wants to destroy us — and now he has a realistic chance of doing so.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that Reform’s current advantage will persist all the way until the next general election. Indeed, there’s an argument that the best time to strike a deal with a rival is when you know you have the upper hand. However, in respect to the Tory-Reform relationship, that might require a degree of humility and foresight that’s quite beyond one or both parties.
So with electoral projections showing a sea of turquoise washing across the land, the safest assumption is that Farage is intent on wrecking the Conservative Party. In which case our last hope would be to find an alternative partner. But who? If not Reform, aren’t we all out of natural allies? Is it not the case that (Northern Ireland excepted) every other party of any electoral significance is on the centre-left?
It is, but one of those parties — i.e. the Liberal Democrats — is more centre than left. The blue and yellows have teamed up before and even if the idea of doing so again is utterly outrageous to both sides now, I’m suggesting that it could become less so the closer that Farage gets to power.
OK, I can imagine what most of you reading this are thinking right now — or possibly shouting out loud.
Something along the lines of “step away from the keyboard, Franklin, you’re drunk!”
For the record, I’m not on the sauce.
Also for the record, I’d prefer — on balance — that we strike a deal with Reform. So I’m not manifesting a forbidden love for LibDemery here. Rather, consider this a warning: assuming that the Conservative Party rediscovers its most basic instinct, there is nothing it won’t do to survive.
So, with our continued existence as the prime objective, what would be the purpose of a deal with the Lib Dems?
Quite simply it’s a numbers game.
If the combined Conservative and Lib Dem vote share is in the same ballpark to Reform UK’s, then in some seats a yellow-blue pact could hold back the turquoise tsunami. Of course, our remaining voters would have to play along and not defect to Reform in disgust — but then those still loyal to us at the next election will tend to be those most reluctant to vote for Farage.
In honour of the “Never Trump” faction of the Republican Party, I’m going to call these Tories the “Never Nigels”. In a scenario where Reform is on track to win a Commons majority, we should expect Never Nigel sentiment to come to the fore — not least because those Tories, including MPs, who feel otherwise may have defected by then.
So that’s the logic from our point of view, but what about the Lib Dems?
Why on Earth would they lift a finger to help save Tory seats from the populist advance?
In theory, they might benefit from the quid pro quo of Tories stepping aside in Lib Dem seats also under threat from Reform. But in practice there aren’t many LD / RUK marginals. On the basis of last year’s general election results, there are none at all. If we double the Reform vote in line with current polling, then Lib Dem seats like Newton Abbot, Torbay and Hazel Grove might be vulnerable, but the Conservatives and Labour have got a lot more to be worried about.
A look at the distribution of Lib Dem seats reveals a curious geographical feature — a diagonal line that runs across the electoral map from the Sussex coast to Shropshire. In England, almost all the Lib Dem yellow patches are to be found south and west of the great divide (Cambridgeshire being the main exception).
Meanwhile, the brightest Reform prospects (and all of their current seats) are to the north and east. Students of Anglo-Saxon history will notice that this line corresponds to the ancient border between Wessex and English Mercia on the one side and the Danelaw on the other. Why this should be deserves a deeper analysis that I don’t have the space for here, but the fact is that our nation is still divided between two realms: Libdemland and Faragia.
The upshot is that a yellow-blue pact is likely to save many more Tory seats (most of them currently in danger from Reform) than Lib Dem seats (most of them currently safe). I suspect that Ed Davey might consider a handful of Lib Dem holds a smaller prize than the destruction of the Conservative Party. Not only might our demise expand the niche that his party might fill in future, he could also co-opt what’s left of centrist Toryism — just as Nigel Farage hopes to hoover up the Tory right.
He’d also have to consider the disgruntled left-wing voters he’s currently attracting from Labour. They wouldn’t like a pact with the Conservatives at all. As a minister in the 2010-2015 coalition government, Davey will remember what happened the last time his party teamed up with the Tories — they lost most of their seats including his own.
Therefore, from the Lib Dem point of view, an electoral pact with us looks like a complete non-starter. Until, that is, one considers the alternative: which is Nigel Farage as Prime Minister at the head of a Reform UK government.
The road to a Reform majority runs in two directions: The first is along the Red Wall and then deeper into Labour territory. The second is along the remains of the Tory-held Blue Wall. In the former case it doesn’t really matter what the Lib Dems get up to because they’re not big players in what has become a Labour-Reform battleground. Further south, however, the Lib Dems can decide whether or not to split the Never Nigel vote.
Of course, for the moment, both parties will play for time and hope that the Reform surge subsides. It is, of course, possible that the populists will blow their big opportunity. But if they don’t then the Lib Dems will face an inconvenient truth: that the surest way of denying Reform a majority is by saving Tory MPs.
