What does "unite the right" mean? PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, gives us his thoughts. 

The first major electoral test since the General Election is upon us. Next Thursday, voters will go to the polls in a swathe of council elections, a number of mayoral elections and a Parliamentary by-election in Runcorn.

There’s no doubt these will be – as they say – “challenging” elections for the Conservatives. The last time these areas were fought, the Tories were riding high in the polls and won a convincing majority of seats.

The party is now ticking along at somewhere in the low 20%s, averaging third place in a fairly close battle with Reform and Labour. Additionally, Reform are soaring in the polls (compared to last July’s election) and contesting virtually every seat this time round.

The scale and nature of the rise of Reform will be the story of the night (or rather the next day as that’s when the counting typically takes place). They are certain to make major gains from what is effectively a standing start.

The intriguing question for me as I eventually get to look through the tea leaves is to try and work out, once the results are in, how much better Reform and the Conservatives might have done had they not fought each other in every corner of the land. There surely will be a large number of cases where a left-wing candidate wins because of a split in the centre-right vote.

For example, a look at the opinion polls for the West of England mayoral elections suggests that if Reform and the Conservatives could have somehow alighted on a joint candidate then that individual would be heading for victory. As it stands, the two parties are likely to come in third and fourth place, with a Green probably winning.

Of course, voters aren’t chips on a poker table to be traded or gambled by the political elite. Conservative and Reform voters are by no means interchangeable. Tories wouldn’t necessarily default to voting Reform - nor vice versa – if they were not given the opportunity to vote for their first choice of party.

There is, however, a meaningful overlap. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the tiny number of seats in which only one of Reform and the Conservatives are fielding a candidate to see just how significant this overlap might be.

Robert Jenrick was in the headlines this week (when isn’t he, in fairness?) putting the case for a “united right”. He has since made plain that he wants to build a coalition of voters and attempt to win back the large number of Conservative-inclined voters who have switched to Reform rather than forging an electoral pact with Nigel Farage. For his part, Farage is sticking firmly to the line of no pacts, no deals.

What will be interesting though is how many councils end up in no overall control with the mathematical possibility of a Conservative-Reform coalition being able to form a majority.  Any such councils could provide a good indication of how – or if – the two parties can work together to actually get things done.

However, beyond the intriguing electoral and psephological questions which will thrown up by Thursday’s vote is a deeper and more significant strategic question.

If the Conservatives and Reform start to converge on a similar policy agenda – to overhaul the current British quangocracy and return sovereignty to Parliament to save Britain – then a better working relationship becomes much more possible.

Get the policy platform right and I suspect the nature of the electoral vehicle needed to win the next general election will become much clearer.

Keep the flag of freedom flying.