In his latest column, PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, looks at Reform UK and argues that there is a route back for the Conservative Party if it becomes unapologetically and emphatically conservative again.

On Thursday night I attended Robert Jenrick’s thank you drinks reception in central London. 

Perhaps it simply was down to the copious amounts of free wine and food but the gathered throng seemed in pretty good cheer. Not exactly punching the air with unalloyed joy but nevertheless displaying a steely enthusiasm that there is a way back for conservatism.

Most of the chit chat was about what we made of Reform UK. A poll that very day had suggested the Conservatives were ahead in the polls but by a very thin margin of 2 %. And it was Reform in second place, a further 1% ahead of Labour. How to reunite the centre-right and use the Conservative Party to successfully do so was the basis of many – in fact, I think all – of my discussions with my fellow guests.

Folk disagreed on whether Reform’s rise (since the election, not at it) amounted to a trickle or a flood. Dame Andrea Jenkyns joining Farage was perhaps not wholly unexpected. But ConHome founder and long-standing commentator Tim Montgomerie doing so felt symbolic as something bigger happening. I’ve known Tim for over 15 years and if you’d told me even a couple of years ago that he’d ever leave the Conservative Party, I’d have questioned your sanity. But there it is.

Similarly, for those of us who obsessively look through local council by-election results in a (perhaps forlorn) attempt to gauge the national mood have noticed that Reform candidates appearing on the ballot paper is an ever more common occurrence and – by and large – they are attracting a meaningful vote share (indeed even picking up the odd seat). All of this is happening while they are still building their grassroots infrastructure and have – at least on their own audit – passed the milestone of 100,000 members. 

British politics has been in this sort of position before. Way back in the early 1980s, the SDP rose like a rocket and then fell like a stone. In more recent times, in the wake of the 2019 Euro elections (where the Conservatives couldn’t even get to 10% of the vote), polls showed the Tories, Labour, the Brexit Party and the LibDems in an effective four-way tie. Just a few months later, two-party politics had reasserted itself and Boris won a landslide. 

That might provide some succour, but it doesn’t provide room for complacency. We are only a few weeks into Kemi’s leadership of the party and I think she has made a pretty good start. After such a short period, it’s obviously hard to draw any firm conclusions – positive or negative. But I hope she and her top team realise what a fight we have on our hands and that we can’t see the next general election as the time by which things need to be in place – it needs  to come a lot faster than that. 

Kemi’s platform of supporting a complete rewiring of the British state provides a good basis to build from. But the building needs to begin now. There is a route back for the Conservative Party if it becomes unapologetically and emphatically conservative again.

But that won’t happen by accident, it must happen by design.

Keep the flag of freedom flying.