"On the European Right there are deep divisions. That is not true of the UK – but that won’t make doing a deal any less difficult"
Telegraph: 28th December 2024: Dan Hannan explains the opportunities and challenges of a Tory-Reform pact.
"If human beings were logic-driven androids, the Conservative Party and Reform UK would now be talking terms rather than trading insults... both parties know that their division offers Sir Keir Starmer his only shot at clinging to office...
...On paper, it should be easy for the two Rightist parties to get their act together... Supporters of the Conservatives and Reform have the same policy aims... ...What chiefly pushes the parties apart is the fact that one has had to deal with the trade-offs of office while the other is free to make demands unsullied by compromise...
The Tories and Reform might have similar manifestos, but they have different and complementary electorates. At the last election, Reform came second in 98 constituencies, 89 of them held by Labour. Of those 98 seats, 60 are in the north of England and 13 in Wales...
...Geography argues for a pact. What kind of pact? The most ambitious version would involve joint candidates... The UUP and the DUP offer an apter model. Although each Unionist party is the other’s chief electoral rival, both are mature enough to grasp that fighting each other in every seat would let in Irish nationalists on minority votes... at the last election, the UUP stood aside in Belfast North while the DUP returned the favour in Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
Such an entente would work splendidly in Great Britain. It would cost the Tories little to stand aside in seats that they have never held in parts of Wales and northern England. Conversely, Reform was a poor fourth in south-east and south-west England, where its candidates handed many seats to the Lib Dems.
...Given the dog’s breakfast Labour is making of everything... such a pact would all but guarantee a Right-of-centre majority at the next election... It would, as I say, be straightforward if human beings were calculating machines..."