Nigel Farage’s Reform plot was to split the right-leaning vote in the 2024 general election.
Nigel Farage ‘knew full well’ what he was doing by splitting the right-leaning vote (Image: Getty)
Nigel Farage “knew full well” what he was doing by splitting the right-leaning vote in the 2024 General Election,dealing a deadly blow to the Conservative Party.
Marco Longhi, a Tory who lost his Dudley seat to Labour at the election after Reform picked up more than 9,400 votes, said he had to question Farage’s ‘commitment to Brexit’ following Labour’s victory.
Whilst Gareth Bacon, the shadow minister for London, said at a Tory conference in Birmingham that “the Conservatives had ended up with fewer MPs than they might have done after the election because of the ego of Nigel Farage”.
Gareth Bacon believes Farage could easily have joined the Conservative Party in 2019 (Image: Richard Townshend/UK Parliament)
Reform UK may have only one five seats but they performed extremely well in many of the constituencies where it didn’t win, likely taking votes from the devastated Conservative Party and 14.3 percent of the vote at the general election.
“Farage could easily have joined the Conservative Party once Brexit had been done in 2019”, said Mr Bacon.
He added: “He could have become a Conservative member of parliament, but had he tried to do that, he would have had to do it in a much more anonymised way than he’s become used to.
“Nigel likes the limelight, he likes to set the agenda, and he can do that in the platform that he now has.
“Joining the Conservative Party would mean he had to rein himself in a little bit, and I’m not sure he’s prepared to do that.”
Reform UK won 14.3% of the vote at the general election (Image: Getty)
It comes as the Daily Express asked delegates at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham their views on the insurgent party.
Tory member Emily Hewertson suggested the Conservatives should strike an electoral pact with Reform.
She said: “If it was up to me, I’m quite a pragmatist, I’d actually make a deal with Reform in certain seats where we’d stand down in some of the northern ones that we’re never going to win and then maybe they could stand down in some of those right-wing seats they’re not going to win.
“I think we should actually consider maybe doing an electoral pact with them.
Whilst former Brexit minister Lord Frost insisted the Tories need to be more conservative to see off the threat posed by Reform.
The Tory peer said: “We can’t win elections if we’re divided on the right so we need to find a solution to that problem.
“I think we should become a properly conservative party once again that is attractive to the kind of voters who left us for the Reform Party.”
