Role playing how a Tory-Reform pact might be negotiated showed how hard it’d be

This weekend I conducted an experiment. How would you negotiate any kind of pact between the Tories and Reform?

Officially, on either side, this isn’t happening. Not a chance. No way – or, not yet.

Kemi Badenoch, and her team, have said repeatedly: why would you do a deal with people who have said they are out to destroy you?

Nigel Farage, celebrating reaching 200,000 members at lunch time on Sunday, and still rising in the opinion polls doesn’t feel the need to work with a party he distrusts and routinely describes as: “yesterday’s news”

In the long term, the maths however, makes for an obvious temptation.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has talked about it, Tatton MP Esther McVey has entertained the question, and former party Chairman Sir Brandon Lewis made the case, with regard to the local elections to the Telegraph this weekened:

“If we want to defeat Labour then the Right has to find a way to come together, and the same logic applies to the locals. I just can’t see that being viable at the moment, because Kemi has been so fixated around saying ‘absolutely no way’. But the Right cannot win while it is split. That’s for sure.”

Of course both parties have denied the prospect of any such deal.

They’ve had to because of just such comments, but also because last week a journalist entered a members club for lunch, and by chance spotted a small gathering that looked like known Reformers sitting with known Tory operators and, going on a hunch, he guessed what they might be about.

This lunch did take place, and was, I understand, a totally unofficial, unsanctioned, exploration of whether an arms-length bridge between the two right of centre parties can be built – if and when it might be necessary. Nothing agreed, just a chat about what it might take. No more than people who know one another chatting – was the word.

It still happened, and this intrigued me.

I decided, unsanctioned, and purely as an intellectual and political exercise to try and replay this discussion, over Sunday lunch. Reform were well represented, I know plenty of therm, and I tried to replicate what I know of the Conservative position. Another guest floated somewhere in the middle, a useful ‘referee’.

There were some ground rules: The discussion took place without any hyper-tribalism and assumed the circumstances had come about where a discussion might be required. We were also honest about our own sides’ weaknesses.

All that might be a lot harder to pull off if it were for real. Indeed what I learned was this whole idea would be a lot harder than people might think.

The Reform pitch was basically: we don’t get the numbers alone to win the majority we’d really want, so having a deal would sort the maths. Labour could be crushed by such a deal. We have the momentum, people are coming to us and not to you. The old politics is changing around the world and it’s changing towards our brand of politics. We both want to fix Whitehall, and agree it doesn’t work, we all know, as Labour have discovered and are admitting. “Cummings was right”. We want to do what people want done, and the Conservatives didn’t or couldn’t. The wind is in our sails not yours, and working with us could help us but might save you. We are still in relative terms a smaller ground operation, but it’s building, and in places is bigger than yours, or could be soon.

None of this was or is a surprise. It’s a valid enough premise.

The Conservative pitch was largely as you’ve seen on this site: Reform have absolutely no experience of running any level of government – and that genuinely matters. They have no more detailed thought-through policy positions than they keep demanding from us, and they need to show they can formulate any. We all have four years to ‘build’ and a lot can happen.  Conservatives have first-hand experience of how Government can gum-up, and therefore what a genuine rewiring and overhaul might look like. Reform can only imagine what the real task is.

It’s not about who has the greater will, or shouting louder at civil servants, or daring to think the unworkable-unthinkable. None of that is going to deliver. You won’t get things done by promising things, harder.  Right now, shattered though it is, we have the geographic footprint on the ground, Reform still have to build that. Many Conservatives think delivery is now more important than bigger promises. Reform now have to maintain the momentum they’ve created for four long years – there is a ‘tortoise and hare’ risk here.

That was the basic back and forth over the meal.

What many Reform fans don’t appreciate is that some at the top of their party can see the Tory case as valid, too. They may not think they need a deal and might not want one, but they get the premise. It’s not a one-way street, and if it were, no discussion will ever take place.

Then we hit bigger obstacles. We agreed neither leader seems to want to work with the other. Farage and Badenoch don’t seem to get on and both see big flaws in the other. Both sides are aware the polls can change. Reform could get to a point where they don’t need a deal or the polls reach a point where the Tories have a lot more leverage than now. Both sides seem happier ‘waiting to see’ which it is.

And then come the biggest questions: What would the deal be? A merger? The “Reformed Conservative Party”? If so, who would be in charge? (biggest question of all) Various forms of electoral ‘pact’ are possible, shy of merger, but that gets you a result, it doesn’t decide how both might govern.

There are huge problems for both built into the nature of how any deal would work, and what concessions either would have to give to make it work.

We also recognised there are senior politicians on both sides who will never countenance a deal. The two parties are not the same, and there are reasons why some Conservative characters Reform would dearly like to jump to them, haven’t done so. Equally voter commitment to Reform seems solid for now, and the Conservative party can see that.

There are also Tories who also firmly believe the Conservative tortoise will eventually finish before the Reform hare, and this entire subject is a red herring – that no-deal is the only good deal. ‘Don’t be defeatist!‘ they say.

As experiments go, it was probably as flawed as any deal might be, but it did demonstrate that there are at least areas where discussion could take place. These might still happen on the fringes, despite what both parties’ leadership-teams decree. ConservativeHome will certainly keep abreast of those that think a pact is inevitable and who try to lay ground work.

The general feeling after our experiment was it it’s a lot harder than it looks to get right, and won’t happen for a couple of years yet – if it ever does.

As she reaches 100 days as leader and aware as she is of the party’s current position, Kemi Badenoch and her team tell me they are determined to rebuild a purely Conservative offer for the next election, one that can win on its own merit. It is still an under-priced outcome in my view,  but there are plenty of readers of this site, members, councillors (and one suspects some MPs) who aren’t yet convinced.

That cannot be ignored.

My only doubt about a fixed no-deal position goes back to the electoral maths. Depending on numbers this discussion, about discussions, isn’t going to go away yet, and for the same reason it may become a reality.

What seems certain is, it will be fended off and denied as an option, by both parties – right up until the moment it happens – if it ever does.

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