🔒 Reform UK overtakes Tories as Badenoch faces Farage threat

Key topics

King Charles III revived a tradition by meeting opposition leader Badenoch.
Reform UK overtook both Labour and Tories in a surprising new poll.
Badenoch faces pressure as Farage’s party threatens Conservative dominance.

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By Rosa Prince ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

When UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch met King Charles III for a private audience this week, the pair were reviving a tradition of new opposition leaders being greeted to the role that quietly lapsed two decades ago. The late Queen Elizabeth II declined to welcome Badenoch’s Labour predecessors to tea and sandwiches at Buckingham Palace, but it was all smiles as the current monarch rolled out the red carpet for the latest Tory incarnation.

Elected in November, Badenoch would be wise to make the most of these quasi-constitutional advantages brought by her role as leader of his majesty’s official opposition — because she hasn’t got much else going for her right now.

Hours after that trip to the palace, a new poll showed for the first time the upstart Reform UK party led by the populist Nigel Farage ahead of not only the Conservatives in voter preference, but overtaking the Labour government too.

Caveats apply: The result was well within the margin of error and polls this far out from the next general election, which need not be held until 2029, are effectively meaningless. But the findings were rightly a wakeup for both Labour and the Tories. Alarmingly for Conservatives, who have been consistently polling below Reform since the start of the year, the new figures seemed to fix the Tories as Britain’s third party — almost an unthinkable position for what had been for 200 years among the most successful electoral forces in the Western world.

Thanks to Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, Reform won only five seats at the July 2024 general election on a vote share of 14.3%, compared with the Tories’ 121 MPs on a share of 23.7% (the Labour government’s whacking majority of 411 MPs in the 650 seat House of Commons was scored on the lowest share of the vote, 33.7%, in history). This most disproportionate vote masked but could not altogether disguise the threat from Reform.

Having helped bring down the Conservative government Badenoch was a part of, Farage used his election victory address to vow to come for Labour next time around. And indeed, 89 of the 98 seats in which Reform came second in 2024 were Labour, many of which need only a tiny swing to switch hands.

But before he turns his full fire on Keir Starmer’s party, Farage may first be tempted to gobble up the Conservatives.

Read more: 🔒 UK Tories in crisis as populists surge and labour declines: Martin Ivens

Thus far, Badnoch hasn’t seemed too concerned about Farage. Accustomed perhaps to the postwar consensus of British politics as a two-party state, in which the pendulum inevitably swings between Labour and the Tories, she heeded those who urged her to take her time about coming up with a policy program in order to get the offer right.

A surprise volte-face on Wednesday evening, in which she unveiled a new immigration pledge, was, aides insisted, not motivated by the rise of Reform. (The plan would extend the time before immigrants could apply to become British citizens from five to 10 years and require successful applicants to prove they were a net economic contributor.)

One explained to me the thinking behind the move: The Tories need to regain voter trust on immigration, a topic the public perhaps cares about above all others, and the timing was to get ahead of the publication next week of the government’s borders bill.

It feels like a gamble, though, to take the argument to Reform’s turf without unveiling other policies on which to rebuild voters’ trust — for example, on taxation, housing, net zero, crime, public services and welfare. Make the conversation all about immigration, and you get into an arms race that only Farage can win — because Reform will always move the goalposts to the right and escalate the anti-immigrant rhetoric further than many Tories could bear.

Team Badenoch says what the public wants is a thought-through policy program presented by a credible government in waiting. And that takes time to formulate properly. The message is: There’s no rush.

But does Badenoch have the time? Right now, as leader of the opposition, she has the advantage of not just tea with the king, but the opportunity to lob questions at Starmer at the weekly joust that is Prime Minister’s Question Time and, most importantly, to respond to the government on the morning and Sunday show broadcast rounds.

Should Farage and co. consistently poll above her party — and certainly if they do spectacularly well in local elections scheduled for May — then it’s hard to see how she’ll hang on to that advantage.

The Conservatives thrived for so long because they built an internal coalition that spanned the north and south, rich and poor, rural and urban — a “broad church” embracing both neo-liberalism and Europhile progressives. By shoring up her right flank, Badenoch risks a hemorrhaging on her left. Remember the Liberal Democrats took 46 seats off the Conservatives in 2024, coming second to the Tories in 20 more while losing only four to Reform.

At an event in Westminster this week to mark 50 years since Ted Heath, one of the party’s greatest “wets” in the argot of the day, was toppled in the leadership election that would eventually elect the uber “dry” Margaret Thatcher, attendees saw parallels between Badenoch and the Iron Lady, who had an uninspired start as leader of the opposition.

The big difference is that Thatcher had no Reform breathing down her neck.

Some argue the Conservatives should come to some kind of pact with Farage in opposition before being forced to do so on the other side of the general election to form an anti-Labour coalition government. I think that would be a mistake — but the Tories do need to take this threat seriously. Badenoch is confident Farage’s party is a one-man show lacking a policy platform and that he will struggle come election time to convince voters he can do anything more than appear on television and make bombastic statements.

Maybe. But didn’t that playbook take Donald Trump all the way to the White House? “Britain isn’t America,” I’ve been told. We’ll see.

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🔒 Reform UK overtakes Tories as Badenoch faces Farage threat – Rosa Prince

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