The landslide victory that Boris Johnson won in 2019 was substantially boosted by Nigel Farage’s decision to withdraw Brexit party candidates from seats with incumbent Conservative MPs.
With defeat looming on the horizon, many Tories would like a repeat of that favour from Reform UK, the current iteration of the movement that started as Ukip. Richard Tice, a leader often seen as a placeholder in expectation of a Farage comeback, ruled out any such pact on Wednesday.
Reform UK is a tiny outfit whose influence in Westminster is amplified out of all proportion to its single-digit poll rating. Tories are obsessed with it because a relatively small-scale defection of voters can cost them a lot of seats. Also, the fringe party is lavished with uncritical attention from Conservative-leaning media. Mr Farage has his own show on GB News.
Mr Tice lacks Mr Farage’s strengths as a performer and struggles to convert his unearned airtime into relevance. The election agenda he set out on Wednesday is a wild mishmash of nationalist and libertarian demands – reckless tax and spending cuts; rejection of any effort to battle climate change; reducing net immigration to zero.
No responsible government could implement such a programme, but the joy of fringe politics is the liberty to advocate preposterous things without any expectation of having to make them work. The tragedy for Britain is that, via Brexit, the ethos of policymaking in wilful defiance of reality has captured the country’s oldest established party.
Rishi Sunak’s efforts to rehabilitate a more practical brand of Conservatism have been half-hearted at best. His own leadership style is sober, but many of his governing choices – the retreat from decarbonisation goals, for example, and the fixation on deporting asylum claimants – have been shaped by deference to the radical right.
When asked, the prime minister has not ruled out welcoming Mr Farage into the Conservative party. It would be a natural match in many respects. That is itself a measure of how much the Tories have mutated in the years since the referendum on EU membership.
Conservatives are reluctant to criticise Reform UK except in terms of electoral tactics, the charge being that the smaller party might facilitate a Labour victory by siphoning votes away from the Tories. That is true, but it is also revealing that Mr Sunak cannot articulate any principled differences between his own politics and those of Mr Tice. This proximity is the effect of convergence over many years. The boundary could dissolve altogether if the Conservatives lose the next election and are no longer obliged even to try to govern practically.
For that very reason, opposition has a certain allure for exhausted and demoralised Tories. It offers them release from responsibility; and the freedom to complain about the condition of a country shaped by decisions made while they were in power. That hypocrisy is systemic on the Eurosceptic right, alongside a habit of turning victories into grievances.
Successive Tory leaders have consistently coddled hardliners, on Brexit and other issues. The effect of that capitulation has been to generate even more extreme demands from a faction of sore winners – those who affect self-righteous martyrdom even when dictating policy to a prime minister.
A fringe cult of perpetual grievance cannot also be a serious party of government. Mr Sunak is running out of time to show that he understands the difference.
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