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Senior Conservatives have warned colleagues against “bloody panic”, urging them not to consider doing deals with Reform or removing Kemi Badenoch as leader, as the party braces for a disastrous set of local election results.
Two former cabinet ministers warned against changing direction regardless of the result next Friday, with Andrew Mitchell saying “talk of deals with Reform is misplaced” and John Glen arguing Badenoch must not be “pushed off course”.
Badenoch’s party is already divided ahead of the election in which it is expected to lose hundreds of council seats, after Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, suggested a pact with Reform would be necessary. Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, also said he wanted to bring together a coalition of the right, though he insisted he was talking about bringing back voters, not a deal with Farage’s party.
Many Tories believe Jenrick has already embarked on a thinly disguised leadership campaign, which he denies. Houchen is also thought of as a possible future leadership contender, with some of his rivals believing he could give up his peerage and seek to enter parliament through a byelection.
Conservative MPs said privately that there were constant whispers and rumours in the tea rooms about “regicide” of Badenoch by submitting letters of no confidence if the results next week are a wipeout, although the majority view was that it would not be possible after giving her such a short time in charge.
Jenrick on Friday said he was on “exactly the same page” as Badenoch, and wanted to “put Reform out of business”. He also said he thought Badenoch was doing a “bloody good job” and called for people to “give her a break”.
Jenrick weighed in behind his leader in an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain about his campaign against stolen tools, which sources said had been set up initially without the knowledge of Conservative HQ – although he approached Badenoch for permission to make the media appearance on Thursday and was given approval to go ahead. Both their teams insisted it was fully sanctioned and there was nothing unusual about the process.
In her own remarks to reporters on Friday, Badenoch confirmed: “We are not doing a deal with Reform, there’s not going to be a pact. What we need to do right now is focus on ensuring that voters have a credible Conservative offer.”
Mitchell, an ex-chief whip and development secretary, said his colleagues should heed the historic words of Rear Admiral Sir Morgan Morgan-Giles who told the 1922 Committee in 1971: “Pro bono publico, no bloody panico”.
“Reform is trying to destroy the Conservative party and at the last election Reform may have taken five seats off us but the Lib Dems took nearly 60,” Mitchell said. “The right way to deal with Reform is not to talk about deals, which is a sign of weakness, but spend time developing the right policies.
“Leading the Conservative party now is an extremely difficult job and I don’t believe the archangel Gabriel would be doing a better job.”
His position was echoed by Simon Hoare, a former housing minister, who said: “Without sounding too much like Corporal Jones, this is ‘don’t panic’.
“It’s an early staging post after the general election. A parliament is a marathon not a sprint. We are not even a year since the general election, and it will be a five year parliament. We’ve got to take our fences slowly and steadily and our key challenge as a parliamentary party is to prove ourselves steady under fire, [and be] calm, rational and mature.”
Another senior Conservative said the “prevailing mood is headless chicken” in relation to Reform, but MPs need to “stop panicking about Reform and think how bad it would look” to depose another leader.
Glen, who attended cabinet as chief secretary to the Treasury, said Badenoch had been elected after “an exhaustive process” and that she has been in post for less than six months.
“The next general election is over four years away and all Conservative MPs know we have a lot of hard work ahead to rebuild trust,” he said. “There are no short cuts to this process but Kemi has set out the pathway to recovery based on thorough policy work and honesty with the electorate. Next week’s elections are likely to be tough but I have every confidence Kemi has a clear plan and she should not be pushed off course by any outcome we face next week.”
Some moderate Conservative MPs, however, said they wanted to see less aping of Reform and a “much more honest” case for why the Conservatives should be the answer. A former minister said the message should be that those voting Reform have “legitimate grievances” especially on economics, and a clear offer with serious policymaking to address how Britain’s low wage economy and open welfare state is “sucking in migrants”.
On the prospect of a deal with Reform, one centrist MP said: “I can see why some people would welcome this as a sort of instant hit, something which might give a quick boost, but in the longer term it would make it much harder for us to win elections, and it would really risk splitting the party.
“Views are mixed, but there would be a significant number of people who would just not be comfortable campaigning under a Reform banner. And if you think about the areas where we lost so many seats to the Lib Dems, it would make things even worse. As a statement of intent it’s pretty big: as a party we have decided to effectively abandon one wing of opinion.”
Another sceptical Tory MP said uniting the Conservatives and Reform would be an “unbelievably poisonous marriage” that would not be sustainable.
