PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, writes that at the next election it won’t merely be desirable to remove this wretched government from office, it will be a necessity in order to save the United Kingdom. We will need the broadest possible base of support behind a coherent and deliverable agenda.

The subject heading is from the chorus of a spoof rap video released by The Crewkerne Gazette.

The key theme is that there might be no love lost between Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage but they might well end up working together to remove Starmer from office.

There’s been a lot of speculation (and idle gossip) this week following reports that Farage told some Reform donors that an electoral alliance with the Conservatives could end up being “inevitable”.

He was very quick to clarify this was not his approach at all and I have some sympathy with him. The problem with discussions over future elections and their possible consequences is that you can find yourself being asked what you think the right thing to do would be in entirely hypothetical scenarios X, Y and Z. If you give any kind of answer at all this is then assumed to be your settled strategy even if you firmly believe the chances of X, Y or Z are around about 0%. My guess is that something like this happened at Farage’s dinner with his financial backers - with a good sprinkling of “out of context” and a decent dash of “misinterpretation” thrown in for good measure.

To make matters still more confusing, three former MPs defected to Reform this week only to be on the receiving end of briefing from a Reform source implying that they are unenthused about former Conservatives seeking to win back their old seats under their new colours.

An additional headache for both Nigel and Kemi is that talk of any form of rapprochement between the two parties is immediately seized upon as a sign of weakness. Indeed this was the exaggerated spin put on Farage’s supposed comments. Journalists made the rather large leap of suggesting that this was stone cold proof that he’d now reached the conclusion that his own party couldn’t win an election on its own.

A glance at the current polls would suggest Reform has good reason to be optimistic about its prospects. Indeed, one recent projection suggested an overall majority for Reform with a few dozen of Zack Polanski’s Greens forming the official opposition.

For the Conservatives, there seems to have been a small tick up in the polls (possibly at Reform’s expense) in the wake of the Kemi’s strong performance at the budget. Perhaps the Tories are bouncing back from rock bottom and aren’t in a death spiral after all - although reading too much into two or three opinion polls is about as daft as taking an OBR economic forecast at face value.

In my tour around the country with David Starkey we are often asked what steps we think should be taken to “unite the right.” 

Last night in Shropshire (full video of the event available soon!) David reiterated his usual answer but gave the best version of it yet.

In essence, it’s unhelpful to get drawn into hypothetical tactical arrangements at this stage and, in any event, no coherent arrangement can be arrived at through simply drawing lines on a map as if we are playing the board game of Risk.

Instead, we need to see the extent to which the Conservatives and Reform ultimately alight on the same policy prescriptions for Britain. There seems to be some modest clustering around a similar agenda on a few areas already - most notably on ECHR and carbon net zero. However, there is still a lot of mistrust around the Conservatives’ determination and ability to deliver (could the party really put a pledge to “cut net immigration to the tens of thousands” in its next manifesto and expect people to believe it?)

The best strategy for now is to encourage a sharing and discussion over ideas - not over possible electoral carve ups.

There seems strong evidence that members of both parties - and at all levels - are rapidly warning to the “Starkey thesis” that we need a great restoration of Britain’s democratic and judicial principles and to return to the central tenets of our constitution.

Who knows where such contemplations might lead but let’s at least try and encourage Conservatives and Reformers to treat each other with courtesy and to explore the extent to which we agree on the cure to the nation’s many ills.

At the next election it won’t merely be desirable to remove this wretched government from office, it will be a necessity in order to save the United Kingdom. We will need the broadest possible base of support behind a coherent and deliverable agenda.

It’s entertaining to speculate on what the precise electoral vehicle(s) will be to achieve this, but the really important thing to concentrate on is to get the overall vision right first and worry about everything else a bit later.

Keep the flag of freedom flying!