The leader of Reform UK has given “cast-iron guarantees” to senior members of his rightwing populist party that it will not step aside for the Conservatives at the forthcoming general election. The Tories won a majority in 2019 after Reform’s previous incarnation, the Brexit party, did not field any candidates against them in the 317 seats which the Conservatives won in 2017, in return for Boris Johnson’s commitment to leave the EU by 2020 before pursuing a Canada-style trade deal. However, Richard Tice has assured senior members in writing that there will be no rerun of that deal. Former MEPs from the Brexit party – including the businessman Ben Habib and Ann Widdecombe – were among those who returned to Reform this year. The written assurance is understood to have been made at the behest of Habib, now Reform’s deputy leader, while other former Brexit party MEPs who rejoined at the same time this year backed his request. Habib said on X on Saturday night that he had joined Reform “to obliterate” the Conservative parliamentary party. “Failure has for too long been rewarded by incumbency. We will change politics for good,” he added. Tice has long publicly insisted that the party would put up a candidate against every Conservative in the next general election but, as the Sunday Times reported, the existence of written assurances appears to be an attempt to ease any internal tensions over where a deal with the Tories would be done. There is some contrast between the language used by Tice and that of Farage, who – while lacerating the Tories under Rishi Sunak – has appeared less committed to the notion that the Conservative party should be destroyed. Tice’s assurance comes as an Opinium poll last Sunday put Reform on 9% support. The party is also competitive with Labour for the working-class voters who backed Boris Johnson’s Tories in 2019.
But its potential to split the vote on the right in many constituencies poses a particular problem for the Tories, who could lose as many as 35 seats in the north and Midlands, according to analysis by More in Common. The same Opinium poll last weekend also revealed that 37% of current Conservative voters would be more favourable towards Reform were Farage, now Reform’s honorary president, to return as leader. Farage has been particularly close to the Conservatives, amid speculation that he could rejoin them, a scenario welcomed by some on the right of Sunak’s party. Reform is understood to be planning a press conference at the start of January to set the scene of an “immigration election” that would take advantage of Tory infighting over Sunak’s plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.