Tory mayor joins calls for deal with Reform UK at next general election

Ben Houchen, a Conservative mayor, has joined calls for his party to make some kind of deal with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK before the next election.

The Tees Valley mayor, who is the Tories’ most powerful elected politician, said he wanted to see a coming together of the two rightwing parties.

He told Politico: “I don’t know whether it’s a merger … [or] a pact of trust and confidence or whatever … But if we want to make sure that there is a sensible centre-right party leading this country, then there is going to have to be a coming together of Reform and the Conservative party in some way. What that looks like is slightly above my pay grade at the moment.”

His comments came after Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, was recorded saying he wanted to unite the coalition on the right of politics “one way or another”. Jenrick’s team insisted his comments had been about “voters and not parties”.

Kemi Badenoch, who beat Jenrick in last year’s leadership contest, has said she was “very clear that there will be no pact” and argued there was no rift between the pair.

She said on Thursday that she did not back the Liberal Democrats’ proposed bill amendment of £1,000 penalties for people who play loud music on public transport, suggesting “people who do those things” would not be able to afford the fine.

Having initially said she was unaware of the Lib Dems’ proposal, she said: “I’m not somebody that looks at the Lib Dems for policy ideas. I think they have a lot of silly people there who don’t necessarily understand how things work.”

She added: “What I would say, though, is that nuisance is a problem. It is very, very irritating having people playing loud music and just being antisocial for all of the other passengers on public transport and more should be done around that.”

Farage gave a speech in Dover on Thursday promising a new “minister for deportations” and caused a backlash among charities by questioning the level of special needs diagnoses for children.

He rejected the idea of forming a pact with the Tories but did not rule out power-sharing arrangements at council level.

He told the event: “We can work with anybody at local government. We can work with independents, we can work with Labour, we can work with Lib Dems … if we’re in that position, we would work with other people … so we would work with other people, if we were able to achieve those objectives, and that, I think, is what our voters would want and would demand of us.”

A Labour spokesperson, responding to Farage, said: “Nigel Farage is taking the British public for fools, but the truth is becoming clearer by the day: a vote for Reform is a vote to let the Tories back into power in town halls across the country.

“After 14 years of Tory chaos, the British people don’t want more of the same. Labour is crystal clear: we will not do deals with either the Conservatives or Reform.”