Peter Franklin: How can we escape the suffocating similarity between the Conservative Party and Reform UK?

Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.

Last week, The Spectator hosted a debate between two Conservatives and two  Reformers. Nick Timothy and Claire Coutinho were in the blue corner facing Danny Kruger and Matt Goodwin in the turquoise corner.

An all-star cast — but it has to be said the drama was lacking. That’s not surprising really, because once you rule out the most combustible personality clashes — say, Kemi Badenoch versus Nigel Farage — where’s the beef?

Of course, the defections earlier this year stirred emotions and there’s the ongoing struggle for votes. But when it comes to issues of principle, just how much do Conservatives and Reformers have to disagree about? These days, not much.

The key moment came in November last year, when Nigel Farage pulled the plug on Reform’s 2024 Truss-tastic tax-cutting manifesto. “Substantial tax cuts” are “not realistic at this moment in time” he said. If anything, it’s the Tories with their pledge to abolish Stamp Duty (in effect, a massive bung to property-rich boomers) who have the more reckless policy.

On immigration, the two parties used to be poles apart, which is what gave Reform its big chance in the first place. But since Kemi Badenoch announced her support for UK withdrawal from the ECHR, there’s little more than nuance between the respective party positions.

They’ve got a lot in common on foreign and defence policy too — not least finding themselves on the back foot after expressing premature enthusiasm for Donald Trump’s entanglement with Iran. They’ve been trying to reposition ever since — and it wouldn’t be a shock if they end up in much the same place.

Another area of convergence is energy and climate policy — both parties would drive an emissions-belching truck through the Net Zero framework. Quite what they’d replace it with isn’t so clear. It’ll be interesting to see how they grapple with the real economics of not zero as opposed to the fantasy version.

While we’re on the topic of future challenges are there any notable Con/Ref differences on pensions policy or tackling the housing crisis? Nope — both parties are committed to the increasingly unaffordable triple lock on the state pension while maintaining the nimby veto on the 21st century new towns that this country desperately needs.

So like two starlets turning up to the same event in identical outfits, the Tories and Reform face the embarrassment of fighting the next general election on indistinguishable manifestos.

To be fair, the forces pushing the two parties together are hard to resist. After 2024, the Conservatives had to shift to the Right to stem the loss of support to Reform. Meanwhile, the closer that Farage gets to power, the more vociferous the accusations that he and his party are too extreme to be trusted. He’s therefore been at pains expunge all hints of actual extremism — not only from his candidate list, but from his policy platform too.

How much of a problem is the Tory-Reform convergence for each party?

For Farage, a pretty big problem. The path to a Reform majority runs through the Red Wall and into the outlying parts of Labour’s heartlands. These are constituencies that have been traditionally reluctant to vote Conservative — and who felt betrayed after some of them were persuaded to do so by Boris Johnson in 2019. Reform, therefore, is vulnerable to accusations that they’re the Tories 2.0 — especially following the spate of defections from the Tories 1.0.

For Badenoch, the convergence is less of an immediate embarrassment — but will get more awkward the closer we get to the next general election. To persuade Con/Ref waverers to vote for her she needs to remain open to a coalition with Reform. But at the same time, in Con/Ref marginal seats, she needs to maximise the number of tactical votes from Labour and Lib Dem supporters desperate to deny Farage an outright majority. That’s a tricky balancing act — and while it doesn’t require equidistance between Reform and the Lib Dems, it would be helpful if the Conservatives had a distinctive manifesto to stand on.

Indeed, both parties need to distinguish themselves from the other. The task is a little easier, though more urgent, for Reform. They can always trade on their outsider status, which, by the way, is the intention behind their latest promise to locate migrant detention centres in areas that vote for the Green Party. The idea is to contrast Reform’s willingness to upset the establishment with the Conservatives’ more cautious approach.

How, then, should Badenoch respond?

Most obviously, by pointing out that zealotry without seriousness is futile. Indeed, the accusation that Reform policy is worked out on the back of a fag packet is already well established. But while the voters may have their doubts as to the intellectual rigour of an avowedly populist party, it’s worth remembering that Reform do have some intellectual heavyweights on board — like Danny Kruger and the party’s head of policy, James Orr. With donations rolling in, Farage has the option of resourcing a truly formidable policy operation.

So that back-of-a-fag-packet putdown might not work forever.

Kemi Badenoch does have another line of attack though. In an interview with The Times she compares Nigel Farage to the ex-Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban: “Nigel Farage wants more government: talking about nationalising oil and gas. He wants to nationalise steel. It’s just big state populism. It’s more Orban than Thatcher.”

It’s an intriguing argument, but there are some problems with it.

Firstly, Farage has always been more libertarian than authoritarian in his instincts — just look at his opposition to the Covid lockdowns. Secondly, Badenoch may not like the idea of the state taking equity stakes in big energy infrastructure, but has she forgotten that this is her own party’s position with respect to new nuclear power stations? Or does she now propose the withdrawal of state investment in the Sizewell C project in Suffolk? Thirdly, as someone who’s very keen on continued drilling in the North Sea, she might like to look into the origins of the UK’s offshore oil and gas sector, which would not have happened without strategic government intervention — such as the construction of the UK natural gas grid.

If the Conservative leader wants to escape the suffocating similarity between the Conservative and Reform positions she’s going to need better, braver ideas.

For instance, does she have anything positive to say about the environment? She may not believe it, but there are millions of green-minded voters on the Right, who’ve been offered zero encouragement from the Conservatives (or Reform) lately.

On the economy, perhaps we could stop using Net Zero as the universal scapegoat for Britain’s chronic low growth problem — and start addressing the real culprit: which is decade-after-decade of public and private sector under-investment. A radical pro-growth agenda would cut back on unearned social entitlements, unfunded tax cuts and the unrestrained rentier economy to redirect resources into the creation of productive capital.

Meanwhile, for British citizens, how about a Marshall Plan to boost homeownership? I’d say that there are more votes to be gained from the millions of people desperate to buy their first homes and start families, than from the much smaller number of landlords and property speculators making money from the dispossession of the young.

We might also like to think about how the rest of the world is going to look post-Trump. Yes, we need to shore up the trans-Atlantic alliance, but Europe also needs to be able to guarantee its own security no matter what. So how is that going to work and where does the UK fit in? Not back into the helpless European Union, that’s for sure — but we still need stronger security relationships with other countries on the continent and beyond.

As for the UK’s commitment to spend 5 per cent of our GDP on defence and national resilience, how can we afford it without an industrial strategy to maximise the economic benefits of such a vast shift in spending?

These are all enormous questions — and the null hypothesis is that both parties will dodge the challenge. Indeed, the temptation to stick to the short-term and the low-risk may prove overwhelming. But on the other hand, fortune favours the brave. My hope is that the party that reaches out beyond its comfort zone — and the sterile zero-sum game with its Right-of-centre rival — will be rewarded for it.