The Critic, after Sheridan.

stephenkmacksd.com/

May 04, 2025

Headline: Reformageddon suggests Tories and Nigel Farage could help each other

Sub-headline: Any party that can win both Kent and Durham needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/reform-tories-nigel-farage-d396ql080

Mr. Colevile is attched to catch-phrases as manuctured place holders, like his latest ‘Reformageddon’, that hints at an imagined ‘something’ about to occure in the political now, or politicak moment! Think of ‘The Red Shoes’ and that wayword advertisement that is animated as partner, to the enchanted dancer? Too highpalutin? 1167 words makes the Critics role mired in speculatons, refracted though more speculations!

Nigel Farage has had some good days in politics. But it’s hard to imagine anything as purely satisfying as standing on stage in Durham to proclaim “a truly historic landmark” — a set of local elections that marked, among a string of other Reform successes, “the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party”, which was being “wiped out in the shires of England”.

For Keir Starmer, the news was … less good. Losing the by-election in Runcorn & Helsby, one of the safest seats in the country, will hardly calm the jitters in his party about its dire poll ratings. On the other flank, we also saw the Greens and Islamic independents continue to eat into Labour’s vote share.

Editor: Its hard to imagine two more mis-begotten candiates, yet view their percursors: David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Mr Sunak!

Editor: some very selective quotation, mined from this well of chatter:

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There, even though the combined vote share for Conservatives and Reform massively outweighed Labour, a divided right helped Labour come through the middle.

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Now, he argued, it is supporting Kemi Badenoch that is a wasted vote: “If you vote Conservative, you stop our chances of winning. If you vote Conservative, you get Labour.”

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But there’s also a case — even if only a tentative and provisional one — that the divisions on the centre right may not be as damaging, for either party, as the consensus has it.

Let’s start with the results from Thursday. It is clear that Farage has forged a remarkable coalition. Any party that can win both Kent and Durham needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

In fact, Reform did not just win votes where the Tories won in 2019 and 2021, but also where they could never dream of doing so — in particular, some of the working-class Labour strongholds where even Boris Johnson, in his post-Brexit pomp, could not triumph.

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Editor: Reader delay your bout of ennui, and read the last three paragraphs of this essay!

Of course, the parallels aren’t exact — not least because of the difference between a referendum and a five-way first-past-the-post grudge match. And trying to carve out an electoral foothold in an environment transformed by Reform may be a historic comedown for a Conservative Party that has long had a comfortable monopoly on the centre-right vote. But that’s what you get when you screw up as badly as the Tories have in recent years.

As for Farage, he has long dreamt of supplanting the Tories as the country’s second party. That dream is closer than ever to being fulfilled. Yet even if Reform eclipses the Conservatives, it is still hard to see either having the strength to win on its own.

A single right-wing ticket, in whatever form, would prevent Labour from coming through the middle. But it could also taint both Tories and Reform with the negatives of the other. Better for each movement to focus ruthlessly on the voters it is best placed to attract. Buttressed by voters’ impeccable ability to self-sort, such an approach might just mean, as in 2016, that a divided right ends up being more than the sum of its parts.

The Critic, after Sheridan.