OPINION – JONATHAN SAXTY: Voters shouldn’t want a party trying to out-Reform Nigel Farage when they can have the man himself.
Nigel Farage must see off the Tories (Image: Getty)
The Tory credibility gap has gone nowhere. Sorry, Kemi, but we won’t forget your party’s 14 years of failure and your seminal role within that toxic Conservative government. You may try to out-Reform Reform, but voters know a fraud when they see one. They want the real deal, not a pale imitation party which botched Brexit, failed to scrap IR35 rules and kept us in the ECHR. Boriswave, anyone?
As the Reform conference gets underway, Nigel Farage and co cannot hammer this message home enough times. Yes, Reform’s support has taken a hit. Hardly a shock given new PM Andy Burnham’s softball media coverage plus an Establishment fishing expedition uniquely targeted on Reform (as if the Tories never said boo to a goose!).
Yet Reform still has the edge. Plus when you add together Farage’s votes plus those for Restore – and assume these voters will see sense on election day – each poll shows Reform either drawing level with Labour or overtaking Team Burnham. And in every scenario, Reform still beats the Tories.
This will be Reform’s balancing act: credibility against a discredited Conservative Party whose miserable track record needs to be pointed out again and again, while winning back Rupert Lowe’s supporters without making base appeals to ethnic hatred.
Whether or not Reform and Restore work out any formal or informal deal, Reform needs to emphasise the fact that, unlike Restore, it actually has a shot at government while a vote for Lowe merely helps the uniparty.
Simultaneously, Reform can exploit Badenoch’s credibility gap: reminding folks ceaselessly of the Conservatives‘ woeful record in government against a Reform party which can be actually trusted to deliver on immigration, crime and the economy.
The knives are going to be out for Reform every day until the election, but Farage’s party still has the cards to play against both the Tories and Restore. That credibility gap needs to be hammered again and again.
Never let anyone forget 2010 to 2024.