Richard Tice says Nigel Farage will be involved in the party’s election campaign, as he vows to challenge the Conservatives on every seat.
What do you do when your former allies turn into your biggest rivals? That’s the question facing many Conservative MPs, who are reportedly pleading with Reform UK not to stand against them in the next general election.
Reform UK, the rightwing populist party led by Richard Tice, is aiming to shake up British politics by challenging the Tories on their core issues of taxation, immigration, and Brexit. Tice also revealed that Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader and Brexit champion, would play a formal role in the party’s election campaign.
Farage, who once said he believed he would be leading the Conservative party within three years, is the honorary president and dominant shareholder of Reform UK. He told the Guardian that he was not ruling out a political comeback, saying: “never say never”.
A test for the Tories
The party announced on Wednesday that Ben Habib, its deputy leader, would stand in the upcoming Wellingborough byelection, a seat that the Tories are struggling to hold against Labour. The move is seen as a sign of Reform UK’s ambition to contest every constituency in England, Scotland and Wales in the general election, potentially splitting the rightwing vote and costing the Tories dozens of seats.
Tice said he was receiving calls from Conservative MPs and councillors, who were asking him not to run against them. He said they were “one of the nice guys”, but he dismissed their appeals, saying there would be no special deals “under any circumstances” with Rishi Sunak’s party. He also claimed that many “disgruntled” Tory donors were talking to him.
A clash of visions
At a press conference in central London, where he attacked the Conservatives on their record on stopping the boats, driving down inflation, and cutting taxes, Tice said the Tory deputy chair, Lee Anderson, was “terrified that Reform is going to put him out of a job”. Reform previously denied it had been offering financial incentives to MPs to defect to it, amid claims Anderson was offered “a lot of money” last month.
The Conservatives responded on Wednesday through their party chair, Richard Holden, who said a vote for Reform “will only strengthen Labour’s hand”. He said the Conservative government was focused on long-term decisions for the country, and that if voters wanted real action to deliver a brighter future, the Conservatives were the only choice.
As Winston Churchill once said: “Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.” How will the rise of Reform UK affect the political landscape of Britain? Only time will tell.