At last, the day of reckoning has arrived.
Voters have taken to the polls in Makerfield, Aberdeen South and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. Each race is interesting in its own right. Makerfield could decide the next Prime Minister, Aberdeen South could be a hugely significant Tory win in Scotland, and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is a test of whether the SNP can fend off Labour.
But what ties these by-elections together is that they paint a picture that is not particularly pretty for those on the right in British politics. In Makerfield, an insurgent Restore Party may well eat into enough of Farage’s right flank to hand Burnham an easy win. In Aberdeen South, the dynamic is rather similar, with Reform poised to take enough votes from the Tories that the SNP secure re-election.
Both cases are significant, and the numbers only serve to reinforce this. Polling in Makerfield puts Restore at 7 per cent, whilst the previous Aberdeen South contest saw Reform amass 6.9 per cent of the vote, which was enough to hold back the Tory candidate. The lesson to be learned is clear:
When the right splits, it is the left that wins.
It is worth noting that such a split will not be felt just in Makerfield or South Aberdeen. If this trend continues, it could spread across the country like an incurable illness, with the end result a progressive coalition being handed the keys to Number 10 in 2029. It is a very worrying prospect, and something everyone on the right of British politics, no matter how divided they appear to be, is afraid of.
There is one obvious solution to prevent such a scenario, however. Some form of agreement between right-of-centre parties. A ‘United Right’ if one were to use the language of the SW1 Commentariat.
But the Tory MPs I have spoken to are divided on the matter. Some are of the opinion that the Party should fight on independently. That to submit to the demands of a protest party would amount to nothing short of a humiliation ritual – the most successful force in electoral history being reduced to a grovelling mess. The reasoning for such a stance is consistent enough. Kemi’s strategy is to focus on the economy: ‘stronger high streets’, ‘scrap stamp duty’, every policy costed through the Tories’ ‘golden economic rule’.
And so when this wing of the party looks at Reform, it sees a party fundamentally incompatible with such a project. One cannot champion free markets at one moment and jump into bed with a party that supports nationalising key industries the next. As Michael Gove said recently, ‘Reform are just a protest party.’ They are not a conservative one.
But this resistance is far from universal. Others take a more pragmatic line, arguing that a Burnham-led, left-of-centre coalition would be sufficiently disastrous that the right must do whatever is necessary to prevent it. As one Tory MP told me, a split right-of-centre vote proves that “there is a serious need for both Conservatives and Reform to figure out a way to work together.” Other senior Conservatives echo this with the imagery of sacrifice, arguing that the right must put country before party. That the partisan cost will be dwarfed by the cost to the country. That falling on one’s sword is the noble thing to do here.
Now, observant readers will have noticed that I have not outlined my own view on the possibility of a ‘United Right’. I will confess, I have done this on purpose. This is partly because the question is genuinely difficult to answer, and partly because I am not sure the Right is asking the question correctly.
I say this because the case for a pact is simple enough. A Burnham-led coalition would be sufficiently disastrous that almost any price is worth paying to prevent it. But the historical record should ground us before we go making deals with Reform.
The Liberal Party did not survive its coalition with the Conservatives in the 1920s. The Liberal Democrats did not survive their coalition with them a century later. The junior partner in any such arrangement has a habit of disappearing entirely. A United Right may well prevent a Burnham government. It may also, in the process, end the Conservative Party as a serious political force.
Of course, there is a very legitimate chance that the Tories are not the junior partner in this agreement. Whilst MPs I have spoken to are hesitant that Kemi can win an overall majority, many have not ruled out the possibility of a minority, Conservative-led government which seeks to bring in Reform as a junior coalition partner. Were this to be the scenario, there is a much greater appetite to enter into some type of partnership with Reform. The concern for many, therefore, is not about whether the Tories should do a deal with Reform, it is whether they should do a deal as the weaker partner.
It should also be recognised that all of this assumes that Farage would actually want to do a deal with the Tories. At an event earlier this week, one source told me that when the idea of a Tory and Reform pact was floated to the room, Farage “visibly gagged.” It’s rather unsurprising, given that Reform have made it their mission to destroy the Conservative Party, but if the country is staring down the barrel of a Burnham-led coalition, what’s to say that Farage won’t come to the negotiating table?
But putting these particular caveats to one side, there is a version of this story in which the right wins the battle and loses the war.
Kemi does not need to pick up the phone tonight. She has three years until the next general election, which is enough time to make the economic case for renewal, rebuild the party’s credibility, and force Reform to answer for its own contradictions. The pact question will not go away, but it is also not yet the right question to be asking. The right question, for now, is whether conservatism can make itself compelling enough that the answer becomes irrelevant.