Daniel Vollborth is a Policy Fellow at the Pinsker Centre and was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association in 2025. He is a third year undergraduate reading Architecture at the University of Cambridge.
Reform has begun the difficult task of building credibility as a party able to govern. This transition brings increased scrutiny, and offers the Conservative Party an opportunity to seize back the initiative, and make a renewed case to voters.
For the first year after the general election, Reform moved rapidly, both upwards in the polls, but also in the establishment of their brand beyond just a protest party. As a great many voters exhibited their discontent with the Conservatives and switched, Reform had a lot of room to manoeuvre without suffering too much for missteps such as their flirtation with left wing economics, or platforming of vaccine conspiracists.
They could be dynamic and were highly effective at exuding a populist energy which excited voters. They thus had much more of a licence to push boundaries and shift further right than the Conservatives, still too closely dogged by their last time in government, could.
From last summer that gradually changed. With much of the available support from dissatisfied Conservative and Blue Labour voters won, Reform’s polling began to plateau. They shifted focus from rhetorical victories to high profile defections. Despite bagging a couple of MPs, there was no rout of Conservative support, either among voters or in Parliament.
Meanwhile the Conservatives found steady ground. Kemi Badenoch secured herself in her position following a successful party conference, and put an apparent end to the psychodrama and leader swapping which had plagued the party for a decade. Labour’s failings were by this time beginning to outshine the Conservatives past mistakes, making the constant blame which they placed on the Conservative Party begin to ring hollow and allowing the Conservatives to cease lying low and more meaningfully enter public discourse.
Thus, to move on from this, Reform announced their ‘shadow cabinet’ and the beginnings of a policy platform, in order to start selling themselves as a professional party with a serious policy base. This shift avoids sharing the protest party space with Restore Britain, blunting the vote loss they might experience to them. It also targets the many people who are right wing but don’t support Reform, either out of scepticism that they’ll be able to push legislation through and deliver on their promises, or out of concern that the policy they implement will be poorly conceived or communicated, and something like Liz Truss’s premiership be repeated.
‘Readiness for government’ and credibility can be a very fragile thing in the making. Incidents such as Dr. Aseem Malhotra’s speech at their party conference which Reform can brush off now can become very costly for a party selling itself as serious and mature, and thus they will have to find a balance between the outspoken, excited, and brash tone which voters have come to expect, and the spin and risk aversion more expected of establishment parties and politicians.
This is somewhere the Conservatives have a fundamental advantage, as an incident which might hurt them a little bit, could shatter the efforts of Reform in the eyes of more sceptical voters. Equally, many fundamental questions about how a Reform government would work remain unanswered and indeed, unanswerable, such as how they plan to legislate without any peers in the House of Lords, or how they’ll be able to select and vet 600 MP candidates without becoming vulnerable to back-bench rebellions or incidents such as Sarah Pochin’s maiden Commons speech.
Kemi has worked to position the Conservatives as the most credible party on the economy – which will very likely far outshine immigration as the biggest issue come 2029 – and, at least according to YouGov, appears to have succeeded. The Conservative Party has a much more developed policy research infrastructure than Reform as well, which especially advantages them on some of the more tanglesome issues which Reform have spent time championing, such as cutting the civil service.
With pledges to scrap stamp duty and leave the ECHR, the Conservative Party has signalled that it’s willing to be radical, and given that the current makeup of the voter base is largely legacy voters who’ve refused to defect, their polling will likely be more forgiving of large and creative policy moves than it has been historically. Thus the Conservatives find themselves in a similar position to where Reform were 2 years ago, with a consolidated, loyal, and electorally meaningful block of voters, a great many potential voters they need to win over, and plenty of room for manoeuvre in order to do it.
The Conservatives have huge advantages that can be leveraged but they require boldness and a significant ramping up of activity from Kemi and CCHQ. The Conservatives cannot bill themselves on simply being ‘not Reform’, and do not have to. They have an opportunity to outline a new, ground up, coherent vision of what they stand for and what they will do – a vision independent of and untainted by the previous government. Abolishing stamp duty is a very effective policy, appealing to both young and old people, but importantly acknowledging and correcting the increases George Osborne implemented under David Cameron, helping distance Kemi from the last government.
This is the time for the Conservatives to make their case to voters, and place themselves back on the political map. Until Reform can improve their capacity to produce policy, demonstrate their ability to implement it, and maintain professionalism across their operation, a steady output of policy that is bold, intelligent, and costed, accompanied by the message that the Conservatives, and only the Conservatives, can deliver it, will become hard for Reform to compete with.
Daniel Vollborth is a Policy Fellow at the Pinsker Centre and was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association in 2025. He is a third year undergraduate reading Architecture at the University of Cambridge.
Reform has begun the difficult task of building credibility as a party able to govern. This transition brings increased scrutiny, and offers the Conservative Party an opportunity to seize back the initiative, and make a renewed case to voters.
For the first year after the general election, Reform moved rapidly, both upwards in the polls, but also in the establishment of their brand beyond just a protest party. As a great many voters exhibited their discontent with the Conservatives and switched, Reform had a lot of room to manoeuvre without suffering too much for missteps such as their flirtation with left wing economics, or platforming of vaccine conspiracists.
They could be dynamic and were highly effective at exuding a populist energy which excited voters. They thus had much more of a licence to push boundaries and shift further right than the Conservatives, still too closely dogged by their last time in government, could.
From last summer that gradually changed. With much of the available support from dissatisfied Conservative and Blue Labour voters won, Reform’s polling began to plateau. They shifted focus from rhetorical victories to high profile defections. Despite bagging a couple of MPs, there was no rout of Conservative support, either among voters or in Parliament.
Meanwhile the Conservatives found steady ground. Kemi Badenoch secured herself in her position following a successful party conference, and put an apparent end to the psychodrama and leader swapping which had plagued the party for a decade. Labour’s failings were by this time beginning to outshine the Conservatives past mistakes, making the constant blame which they placed on the Conservative Party begin to ring hollow and allowing the Conservatives to cease lying low and more meaningfully enter public discourse.
Thus, to move on from this, Reform announced their ‘shadow cabinet’ and the beginnings of a policy platform, in order to start selling themselves as a professional party with a serious policy base. This shift avoids sharing the protest party space with Restore Britain, blunting the vote loss they might experience to them. It also targets the many people who are right wing but don’t support Reform, either out of scepticism that they’ll be able to push legislation through and deliver on their promises, or out of concern that the policy they implement will be poorly conceived or communicated, and something like Liz Truss’s premiership be repeated.
‘Readiness for government’ and credibility can be a very fragile thing in the making. Incidents such as Dr. Aseem Malhotra’s speech at their party conference which Reform can brush off now can become very costly for a party selling itself as serious and mature, and thus they will have to find a balance between the outspoken, excited, and brash tone which voters have come to expect, and the spin and risk aversion more expected of establishment parties and politicians.
This is somewhere the Conservatives have a fundamental advantage, as an incident which might hurt them a little bit, could shatter the efforts of Reform in the eyes of more sceptical voters. Equally, many fundamental questions about how a Reform government would work remain unanswered and indeed, unanswerable, such as how they plan to legislate without any peers in the House of Lords, or how they’ll be able to select and vet 600 MP candidates without becoming vulnerable to back-bench rebellions or incidents such as Sarah Pochin’s maiden Commons speech.
Kemi has worked to position the Conservatives as the most credible party on the economy – which will very likely far outshine immigration as the biggest issue come 2029 – and, at least according to YouGov, appears to have succeeded. The Conservative Party has a much more developed policy research infrastructure than Reform as well, which especially advantages them on some of the more tanglesome issues which Reform have spent time championing, such as cutting the civil service.
With pledges to scrap stamp duty and leave the ECHR, the Conservative Party has signalled that it’s willing to be radical, and given that the current makeup of the voter base is largely legacy voters who’ve refused to defect, their polling will likely be more forgiving of large and creative policy moves than it has been historically. Thus the Conservatives find themselves in a similar position to where Reform were 2 years ago, with a consolidated, loyal, and electorally meaningful block of voters, a great many potential voters they need to win over, and plenty of room for manoeuvre in order to do it.
The Conservatives have huge advantages that can be leveraged but they require boldness and a significant ramping up of activity from Kemi and CCHQ. The Conservatives cannot bill themselves on simply being ‘not Reform’, and do not have to. They have an opportunity to outline a new, ground up, coherent vision of what they stand for and what they will do – a vision independent of and untainted by the previous government. Abolishing stamp duty is a very effective policy, appealing to both young and old people, but importantly acknowledging and correcting the increases George Osborne implemented under David Cameron, helping distance Kemi from the last government.
This is the time for the Conservatives to make their case to voters, and place themselves back on the political map. Until Reform can improve their capacity to produce policy, demonstrate their ability to implement it, and maintain professionalism across their operation, a steady output of policy that is bold, intelligent, and costed, accompanied by the message that the Conservatives, and only the Conservatives, can deliver it, will become hard for Reform to compete with.