Reform present Tories with chance to rebuild economic credibility
I bumped into a Tory MP in the City yesterday and after a cheerful catch up their mood crumbled when I asked about the state of their party. “We’re finished as a political force” was the frank assessment.
A couple of hours later, Nigel Farage was making the same point on stage in Westminster, declaring that the Tory party has “had a good 200 years” but “it is now finished.” Current opinion polls provide evidence for his bombast; the latest Find Out Now poll of UK voters puts Reform on 32 per cent (up three from last week) with Labour clinging on at 21 per cent and the Tories languishing on 16 per cent. Other recent surveys paint a similar picture, with at least one putting the Conservatives in fourth place behind the Lib Dems.
At the moment, the only Tory revival strategy generating much interest is the idea – deemed inevitable in some parts – of a Tory/Reform pact and some kind of bid to ‘unite the right’ – but any effort to do so would come up against some serious obstacles.
The reason for Reform’s press conference yesterday was to announce a series of policies aimed at cementing the support of former Labour voters. So, a Reform government would scrap the two-child benefit cap and reinstate the winter fuel allowance. As it happens, Labour is trying to work out a way of doing exactly the same thing but, unlike Farage, their policies have to come with credible funding commitments.
Echoes of Liz Truss
Alongside the ‘right wing welfare’ policies Farage also announced plans to make tens of billions in savings, though his plan to raise the personal allowance to £20,000 would cost between £50bn and £80bn, according to the IFS. Could the Tories – the party of fiscal credibility if they’re anything at all – really sign up to such an agenda? The Liz Truss experiment comes to mind.
With economic mismanagement on the left and fantasy economics on the right, a path opens up for the Tories to once again win on economic credibility. Voters are not stupid (they rejected Jeremy Corbyn’s offer of free broadband) and while a bit of radicalism should be sprinkled into the mix the Conservative party, regardless of who leads it, performs best when making the case for sound finances as part of a credible plan.
It won’t be easy, but it’s the best chance they have of proving Farage wrong.