My colleague from the Daily Mail, Nadine Dorries – as is her wont – has been whipping up a political storm.
First by announcing in these pages her dramatic defection to Reform. Then by expressing her desire for an electoral pact between Nigel Farage and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
‘If there’s a will to make the lives of people better, then I think both men could – and would – find some way to accommodate each other’s egos and to coexist for the sake of the country,’ she told fellow Mail columnists Sarah Vine and Peter Hitchens in a special edition of their Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast.
The reaction from Dorries’s new political bedfellows was swift and brutal.
‘We would certainly not welcome Boris Johnson,’ Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy raged. ‘That’s never going to happen. Boris Johnson was one of the worst PMs in history.’
Articulate
And at one level, Yusuf’s high-handed response is understandable. What would his party want, or need, from another languishing in fourth place behind Labour and the Lib Dems?
Nadine Dorries (pictured at the Reform Party Conference with Nigel Farage) has been whipping up a political storm. First by announcing in these pages her dramatic defection to Reform. Then by expressing her desire for an electoral pact between Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, writes Dan Hodges
I spent a couple of days at Reform conference in Birmingham last week. It was professionally managed, and full of energy.
Some of the delegates flaunted mild eccentricities, as is the way at every political gathering. But those I spoke to were engaged, articulate and committed to their cause. And would not have been markedly out of place at a Labour or Tory conference.
So the hubris of the Reform leadership is not entirely misdirected. Especially given they are currently sustaining a significant double-digit poll lead.
But if I were Farage and his lieutenants, I wouldn’t be so quick to readily dismiss Nadine’s strategy. Because, despite the ongoing implosion of Keir Starmer’s benighted administration, a Tory/Reform pact may yet prove to be the only sure-fire way of ejecting Labour from office.
It’s true that on the surface Reform’s conference was slick and polished. But behind the scenes, something nasty was stirring.
Actually, not so much behind the scenes, as up in lights on the main stage. One of the keynote speakers was Aseem Malhotra, an adviser to maverick US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy.
Farage has a deft political touch, and is rightly lauded for his ability to take the pulse of the nation. But the man who effectively harnessed the growing discontent of the voters and moulded it into a viable and electorally successful political programme was Johnson, writes Dan Hodges
And, as it turns out, a crank. ‘It’s highly likely that the Covid vaccines have been a significant factor in the cancers in the Royal family,’ he declared to conference, without providing a shred of evidence to support this outlandish and dangerous claim.
Malhotra was followed on stage by Lucy Connolly, recently released from prison after her conviction for inciting racial hatred after tweeting migrants hotels should be torched. As she walked out she was introduced as ‘Britain’s favourite political prisoner’.
Which will come as news to much of Britain.
A poll conducted by More In Common immediately after her release found 52 per cent of those questioned believed her sentence was correct, or even too lenient, whilst only 35 per cent thought it too harsh. Only 18 per cent thought mainstream politicians should openly associate with Connolly.
There is balance to be struck between surfing the populist wave unleashed by legitimate public anger over uncontrolled migration, the cost of living crisis and the open contempt shown by the British elite to working people – and embracing the more toxic elements sloshing around British politics.
And Reform’s display in Birmingham showed that despite their advances, they are still struggling to properly moderate and calibrate their brand.
Farage has a deft political touch, and is rightly lauded for his ability to take the pulse of the nation.
But the man who effectively harnessed the growing discontent of the voters and moulded it into a viable and electorally successful political programme was Johnson.
Where Farage is currently leveraging mid-term public anger into a polling average in the low 30s, Boris was able to garner the support of 44 per cent of British people.
Not shouts of protest in the street or angry posting on social media, but actual crosses placed on genuine ballots slipped into real, battered ballot boxes.
What’s more, Boris was able to build a genuine, wide-reaching electoral coalition. Red Wall Workers. True Blue Tories. Disillusioned Middle Englanders. And he did so not via a narrative of anger or bitterness, but one of optimism and inclusivity.
So, if Farage wants to slap away the hand of friendship proffered by one of Boris’s closest allies, he can do so. But he had better be careful he isn’t cutting off his nose to spite his face. And cutting off Britain’s nose in the process.
Drubbing
The same applies to those Conservatives who continue to turn their backs on any prospect of a Conservative/Reform alliance.
Kemi Badenoch was dealt an almost impossible hand in the wake of her party’s 2024 electoral drubbing. But I believe that, at a time of mounting political crisis, she has failed to assert herself at the heart of the national debate.
And in the wake of the Angela Rayner scandal – and Badenoch’s inexplicable failure to press the Prime Minister on it at Question Time last week – Tory MPs have begun casting around for a replacement. ‘This can’t go on,’ one senior Conservative told me last week.
Fine. But who do they have waiting in the wings?
Robert Jenrick is energetic, but erratic. James Cleverly is statesmanlike but anonymous. In dumping Badenoch, Tory MPs risk leaping from the frying pan straight into the angry fire of voters who still haven’t forgiven them for the chaos and drift of the Liz Truss/Rishi Sunak years.
Kemi Badenoch was dealt an almost impossible hand in the wake of her party’s 2024 electoral drubbing. But I believe that, at a time of mounting political crisis, she has failed to assert herself at the heart of the national debate, writes Dan Hodges
Reform are seeking a political earthquake. The Tories are praying for a political game-changer. And a formal pact between the two parties may well prove to be the only way to deliver these things.
Yes, Starmer’s popularity has plummeted to unprecedented depths. But it’s increasingly likely he will be removed as Labour leader before the next election.
Chance
At which point all bets are off. Wes Streeting’s easy charm or Andy Burnham’s unpolished Northern authenticity could change the political mood. A global economic upswing could relieve some of the fiscal pressure.
Further questioning and scrutiny of Reform’s policy programme, and broader fitness to govern, will inevitably raise doubts among voters exhausted by years of chaos presided over by the two established parties.
It’s understandable that there are many within both the Tory and Reform camps who are wary of an alliance. But there is one other group even more alarmed at the prospect of a merger, or some other pact, between the two rivals.
Labour. As one Minister told me a few weeks ago, ‘so long as the Right is split, we still have a chance. But if someone finds a way of bringing them together, we’ll be finished. Possibly for good.’
At the moment it seems that transformative partnership rests in the hands of two men – Farage and Johnson.
‘I think both men could find some way to accommodate each other’s egos,’ Dorries has claimed Starmer and his colleagues are hoping, fervently, that she’s wrong.
