Tories take note: Reform will come at Labour from the left
As the dust settles on the local elections, party leaders will be busy trying to identify the right lessons. For the Conservatives, the picture is both clear and complicated. As Kemi Badenoch put it, her party faced a “bloodbath” in councils across the country. That’s the clear bit. The complicated bit concerns what she should or could do to reverse Tory fortunes.
On the weekend broadcast round she reiterated her position that rebuilding her party’s electoral chances will require “slow and steady work” – and that changing leader (again) would not help. She said her job was to stop Nigel Farage becoming Prime Minister – an admission that in itself speaks to the staggering success of Reform UK.
While the local elections only provided a snapshot of electoral sentiment (next year’s vote will see many more council seats up for grabs) they did serve as the first proof point of what the polls have long been telling us; that Farage’s party is upending UK politics. As for Labour, a typically robotic Keir Starmer said the message had been received and that he’d now go “further and faster” in delivering his “plan for change” – as if the message from the voters had been “we like what you’re doing and we’d like more of it.”
The PM vowed to prioritise three clear objectives: “put money in your pocket, lower NHS waiting lists [and] lower immigration numbers.” This unambitious and technocratic response is part of the reason why his party last week lost a parliamentary by-election that they’d stormed with a huge majority just last summer. Still, if the PM’s reaction to last week’s vote was uninspiring, the response from his former cabinet colleague Louise Haigh was positively delusional. She’s called for higher taxes and says her party has to ditch its “self-imposed tax rules”, which prevent the government raising income tax, VAT or national insurance.
As absurd as this notion is, Haigh correctly identifies that Reform UK aren’t coming at Labour from the free-market right; they’re coming from the left – calling for reindustrialisation and nationalisation. This realignment presents the Conservatives with an opportunity to reclaim, own and capitalise on sensible, free-market economic policy in this country.
They should seize the opportunity and let Labour and Reform fight it out on the left.