CONSERVATIVE MPs have argued the party should make a pact with Reform UK like they did with the Brexit Party in 2019 for any upcoming elections.
The MPs' calls come after Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said her party’s councillors should enter into a coalition with Reform UK in a bid to take control of local authorities in next month's local elections in England.
However, despite Badenoch ruling out any “national level” deal with Nigel Farage’s party, some Tory MPs are now calling on her to strike an informal deal where right-wing candidates could avoid competing and splitting the vote.
Badenoch issued a bleak warning to her Tory peers last month, predicting “extremely difficult” local elections on May 1 with polling indicating Reform will probably win many Tory seats.
The Tory leader has since hinted at potential Tory-Reform council coalitions with some of her MPs now calling for a similar non-compete deal at a national level.
Conservative MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (below) told The i paper: “A non-compete arrangement, such as we had with the Brexit Party in the 2019 election – I would have thought that does make a lot of sense.
“There’s no point going in and then both of us letting in a Liberal or Labour or a Green administration by competing with each other.
“I think there’s a lot to be said for that, and I think it’ll become more obvious as time goes by, but it’s still early days yet.
Clifton-Brown added: “I think in politics one never says never to anything. So, who knows what will happen in the next four years or so?”
Another Conservative MP agreed, as they said: “There could potentially be an understood accommodation where you might say to Reform, ‘We will stay out of your way if you stay out of ours.’
“Both of us are on the right of centre, and if Reform against Conservative candidates end up with a Labour MP, then everybody loses out.
“We could say to them, ‘Reform actually loses out and the constituency loses out’.
“I can see why it might be a moderately sensible thing to do that."
“But the idea of the Conservative Party, which is the oldest and most successful political party – although obviously not at the moment – formally joining up with Nigel Farage is absolutely for the birds. It’s a really weird idea,” the source added.
A third Tory MP told The i Paper they had also been thinking about an informal pact with Reform as they said: “I’m not against it in principle, but it depends on a lot of things and it’s still early days.
“But I am making a point of being friendly to them when I see them in Parliament.”
In response, a Conservative Party spokesperson pointed to remarks made by Badenoch last week.
“I have said categorically that I am not doing deals with Reform. Nigel Farage has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative Party,” she said.
Labour Party Chair Ellie Reeves has written on Monday to her Tory and Reform counterparts challenging them to rule out any power-sharing arrangements, at any level, in English local government.
She wrote: “None of this is a surprise.
“There is clearly significant appetite for such a deal in the Conservative Party given Kemi Badenoch’s failure to show she has listened or learned the lessons from its defeat.
“Furthermore, Reform’s ranks in Parliament and as council candidates are now swollen by ranks of lifelong Conservatives posing in Reform rosettes, as Farage’s donors urge you to 'unite the right'.”
