Peter Bone: Reform UK is good for the Conservative Party and good for the country

Peter Bone is the founder of Grassroots Out (GO) and the former Conservative Member of Parliament for Wellingborough

Ten years ago today, I formed Grassroots Out (GO) with Tom Pursglove and Helen Harrison. I had walked out of Vote Leave because it was clear that Dominic Cummings, its campaign manager, had no intention of making it a truly cross-party campaign.

At GO we created a genuine cross-party movement. We had a whole range of politicians from different Parties, including David Davies and Liam Fox from the Conservatives, Kate Hoey and Nigel Griffiths from Labour, Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley Jnr from the DUP and Nigel Farage and Richard Tice from UKIP. The only requirement to join GO was that you put your Party politics to one side and campaigned to leave the EU.

At the time, this split in the Leave campaign was thought to be hugely damaging and even fatal in the effort to win the Referendum, handing certain victory to the Remain campaign, Britain Stronger in Europe.

GO went on to challenge Vote Leave to become the designated official Leave campaign. In the end, missing out by four points.

Instead of damaging the Leave campaign, this split, and the competition, invigorated it. In fact, it was the reason Leave ultimately won the Referendum. There was a doubling in the number of activists campaigning to Leave, those from Vote Leave and those from GO. Twice as many people knocking on doors and making the case for leaving the European Union superstate, twice as many street stalls, twice as much merchandise, and twice as much literature. To the average voter, however, all they saw was a mountain of Leave activity.

In the media, whether print, radio or TV, both GO and Vote Leave were making the case for Leave. So, instead of having one Leave voice on a TV show, there were often two. Again, the voters just saw a blizzard of Leave comment.

Across the whole of the United Kingdom and Gibraltar, there were hundreds and hundreds of pro Leave meetings and rallies. These attracted audiences of a handful of people up to thousands. Personally, I spoke at more than a hundred. At these meetings there were GO supporters with their green ties and Vote Leave supporters in red. The point was that they weren’t really GO or Vote Leave supporters they were Leave supporters galvanised into action by the two campaigns.

The two national leaders of the Leave movement, Boris Johnson for Vote Leave and Nigel Farage for GO, both excellent communicators, both getting the Leave message across, electrified the campaign. And, the two campaigns reached different audiences. GO, for instance, had George Galloway at its London rally. There was no way Vote Leave could have influenced voters who supported George Galloway. Equally, Vote Leave could reach Establishment groups who would never have listened to the GO campaign.

On the 23^rd June 2016, the EU Referendum polling day, the You Gov opinion poll predicted a 52 per cent – 42 per cent result, not for Leave, but for Remain. In fact, the majority of opinion polls forecast a Remain win. The actual result was Leave 51.9 per cent and Remain 48.1 per cent, a majority of less than 2 per cent. In my opinion, the split between Vote Leave and GO, without doubt, resulted in the additional campaigning activity which produced far more than that 2 per cent victory margin.

Now let’s now look at the present day. For the first time in living memory, there is a serious split in the right-wing vote. Up until now, the Conservative and Unionist Party has dominated that vote. If you supported the right and wanted to see a right-of-centre government, you voted Conservative. Today the right is split, the traditional Conservative Party is on around 18 per cent in the polls and the new boys on the block, Reform UK, are on 29 per cent.

This has almost universally been seen to be a disaster for the right in UK politics. I take the opposite view. It has caused a revival in conservative right-of-centre politics. It has had the same effect as the Vote Leave/GO split.

In Parliament, there are now two political parties arguing against the Labour government and left-wing ideology. The number of right-wing political activists has more than doubled with Reform UK having more members than the Conservative Party. At local elections, there are double the number of right-wing candidates. Each contest attracts both Reform and Conservative Party candidates, leading to double the literature, double the door-knocking and double the right-wing political activity.

In print and social media, there are both Conservative and Reform articles. On TV and radio, there are often both Reform and Conservative commentators. There are two leaders from the right, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, not just one. And what the average voter sees is a massive onslaught on the Labour government by the right.

This has resulted in a huge leap in support for the right. At the last General Election, Labour got 35 per cent of the vote, whereas the Conservative Party and Reform combined managed just 39 per cent between them. Today, Labour are on 19 per cent, and the combined forces of the right are on 47 per cent. A 28 per cent lead for the right.

The competition between Reform and the Conservative Party has been by far the major factor in such a right-wing lead. Of course, in the EU Referendum, it was easy for GO or Vote Leave supporters, they just had to put their cross against Leave. In Parliamentary elections, you have to vote for a candidate from a political party.

At the next General Election, either Reform or the Conservatives might be dominant, and it will be obvious to the electorate which party to vote for to get a right-wing government. However, it is equally possible that Labour, the Conservatives and Reform will all be polling in the 20s, then the leaders of the right will have to make a decision, go into the election as normal and risk another disastrous Labour government, or reach an accord that maximises the number of Conservative Party and Reform candidates who are returned as MPs leading to a Parliamentary majority for the right and kicking Labour out.

In policy terms, there is much more on which we agree than which we disagree. It must be possible for an accommodation to be found in such circumstances. In Parliament, I worked for years alongside Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and Priti Patel and know they are courageous conservative politicians who are desperate for a right-of-centre government. I have worked equally closely with Nigel Farage and Richard Tice who I know are patriots who have, for years, campaigned for right-wing policies and are also desperate for a government of the right.

So maybe, just maybe, like with GO, party politics will be put to one side in the national interest.