This week’s voter intention poll by YouGov placed Reform UK in 1st place for the first time, with a quarter of respondents saying they would vote for the party if a general election were held tomorrow.
- Reform UK: 25%
- Labour: 24%
- Conservatives: 21%
- Lib Dems: 14%
- Greens: 9%
Reform have also consistently been ahead of the Conservatives among various other pollsters, with Nigel Farage thus arguing that his party is now the true voice of opposition.
Given that Britain appears to be entering an era of a new 3-party-system, with 2 of those parties being distinctly right-wing, suggestions have inevitably been raised about a merger or electoral pact.
Esther McVey, MP for Tatton and former Minister of State without Portfolio, appeared on the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s podcast this week, and endorsed an electoral pact between the two parties, but didn’t think a formal merger was realistic.
McVey now occupies the backbenches, having not been offered a role in the Shadow Cabinet by Kemi Badenoch. She declared that she didn’t want to see the Labour party, and thus “socialism” win the next election because the two right wing parties “did not come to some sort of agreement”.
Regarding a potential merger between the two parties, McVey suggested that the personnel would have “a lot of egos in there” who may not “come together and govern the country” effectively.
She also ruled out joining Reform UK, and said that “they asked me to join a long time ago when [Richard] Tice ran it and we’re mates, I wish him well”.
McVey said that Conservatives’ “core ideology” was a “small state, power to the individual, low taxes”, but that this had been abandoned by the party, meanwhile Reform “snaffled up our beliefs and ideologies”.
YouGov recently polled Conservative and Reform UK voters about the prospect of a merger, with 47% of Tory voters supportive, compared to 38% for Reform UK. The appetite for an alliance between these two right-wing parties is clearly there among voters, but as things stand, the leaderships of the two parties couldn’t be further from that reality.
When asked about the prospect in January, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch replied: “Nigel Farage says he wants to destroy the Conservative Party. Why on earth would we merge with that?”.
During the general election campaign last summer, Farage said he wouldn’t join the Conservatives in their current form, but said he would be happy lead a merger between the two. Since then however, Farage has looked to displace the Tories as Britain’s de facto right-wing party, and paint Reform as the voice of opposition to Starmer’s Labour.
Yesterday Reform UK’s Chairman Zia Yusuf rejected former Tory minister Jacob Rees-Mogg’s suggestion of a ‘non-aggression pact’ between the two parties in a post on X.
“After what you and your traitorous Cabinet did to this country, no thanks mate. Reform will fight every Tory, and we will win a decisive victory for the United Kingdom”
If the aforementioned YouGov poll is believed to be accurate, the two parties would have a combined vote share of 46% – easily enough for a parliamentary majority if achieved at a general election. But given Farage’s aim to displace the Conservatives, and the fact that the next election could be up to 4 years away, it’s likely he will continue to rule out any sort of deal, hoping that Reform UK’s polling rise continues, and propels him into government.
