BIRMINGHAM, England — “Vile,” “horrible,” “betrayal,” “bastards.” For Conservative aides and politicians gathering at their annual conference this week, the hatred of Nigel Farage’s rival right-wing party Reform UK is real.
Since the opposition party’s last gathering, an already icy relationship with Reform’s national leadership has entered deep freeze. The defections of high-profile Tory politicians, including Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman in January this year, added a personal animus to the battle for votes on the British right.
And yet, Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch has not categorically ruled out some kind of tie-up with Reform after a general election. Politically, she cannot afford to take it off the table.
Senior Conservatives at lunches and receptions this week were quick to aim invective and mockery at Reform — privately and sometimes in public, fueled by a row that Braverman triggered last week when she said that, as a British-born woman of British-Asian origin, she was “not an English person.”
“They’re just not our kind of people,” Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch, the first black leader of a major political party, told the BBC about Reform on Tuesday.
Badenoch’s most senior aides put it even more bluntly. “They’re just nasty people,” said one top Conservative official, granted anonymity to speak frankly. “These people [Reform] have spent two years viciously attacking the exact people they would have to meet about any deal,” said another. “If Kemi and Rob go into a room, what are they going to fucking talk about?”
Badenoch told broadcasters Tuesday that she would rather force a second general election than strike a deal with Reform. That may be the only practical option left to her.
POLITICO spoke to more than a dozen senior Conservative politicians and aides at the party conference. Almost all indicated that a deal with Reform is not only undesirable, but the hostility is now so bad that it would fail if Badenoch ever tried to enact it.
A senior Reform official responded to this story by saying: “Two years of being hammered at the local elections has finally made the Tories crack. Quite clearly they’re obsessed with us whilst their own party crumbles around them. We look forward to consigning them to the dustbin of history.”
‘Cold day in hell’
If the U.K. held a general election now, almost all polling suggests Britain’s right-leaning vote would be deeply split between these two parties and further undercut by a third — the hard-right Restore Britain. That could allow Labour to squeeze through and win the most seats under the first-past-the-post electoral system, like it did in 2024.
If there was a real deadlock, even after a second election, Badenoch would be left with an unenviable choice: team up with Farage, or let Labour — perhaps with a rainbow coalition of Liberal Democrats, nationalists and Greens — run the show?
The relationship between the Conservatives and Farage, who left the party in 1992, has long been fractious and worsened after the 2019 election — when Farage stepped aside to aid a pro-Brexit majority for Boris Johnson, but received no thanks.
Since last year the defections (and the fighting talk they attracted) have sent the relationship nosediving further. Most of the opprobrium is saved for Jenrick. A year ago he was the guest speaker at a lunch with Tory donors and mayors, holding forth in private about the changes his party needed to make. Three months later he was gone. The defection of Danny Kruger, who was more respected by many on the Tory right, added hurt to insult.
The Conservatives produced an AI-assisted “tapestry” at this year’s conference that contained several mocking references to a crying Jenrick. Tory politicians repeatedly bring up the questions surrounding Reform’s finances.
Badenoch told broadcasters Tuesday that “the people in Reform are neck deep in scandal” and any tie-up “would just be one problem after another.” Her aides believe the public are no longer viewing Reform as a blank slate.
“I can’t imagine it being a nice coalition,” said a shadow cabinet minister. They added: “I think that Reform in power would go to pieces very quickly, they’re a very brittle top team. I wouldn’t want to be tied to that. I wouldn’t want to become responsible in any way for their mistakes or all the crazy ass money they’ve taken.”
Many of those most opposed to a Reform tie-up have been attending Tory conferences for decades. One center-right veteran of past Cabinets said: “It’ll be a cold day in hell when we get into bed with those bastards … The only way we could [enter government] is with a governing partner. If that’s the choice, I’d rather that we were a strong opposition.”
A second Conservative former Cabinet minister predicted: “There’s no way [Badenoch] will do a coalition. She just can’t trust them.” But they suggested Badenoch has other, less formal options that would still see a tie-up with Reform. “It depends how big the margin is,” they said. “If it’s anything, I think it would be a confidence and supply [agreement].”
‘Ethnicity is different’
Political tactics are one thing. Tory officials believe someone linked to Reform UK leaked a meeting 11 months ago between Katie Lam — a Conservative frontbencher — and Reform donor Nick Candy, to damage the Tories just as their conference was getting under way. (The meeting happened at a time of intense defection chatter.) A person with knowledge of the meeting insisted Lam had ignored a series of messages from Candy afterward.
But things have gone further in recent weeks. Braverman’s comments about Englishness, on an episode of the BBC’s Question Time debate program, struck a nerve for Badenoch personally while also providing her with a chance to differentiate herself from Reform.
Badenoch, who has campaigned for gender-specific toilets, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Tuesday: “Men and men and women are women, I’m very strict on that. But ethnicity is different. My children are half white and half black. We are a multiracial country. I think we should be proud of that.”
Hostility from Tory aides extends to Reform’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf and his pronouncements on social media. Yusuf said last month that Labour’s candidate in a special election was “born in Somalia. Do you understand what’s happening?” (The candidate, Sagal Abdi-Wali, moved to London as a child refugee in the 1990s.) Raheem Kassam, an ally of Farage in the U.S., posted on X last month calling Badenoch a “Nigerian scammer” (she was born in the U.K., moved to Nigeria and returned aged 16.)
A second shadow cabinet minister said: “We can’t allow the right to turn into this horrible, ugly thing. Let’s talk about the ideas.” James Cleverly, one of the Conservatives bidding to run for mayor of London in 2028, accused Braverman, Yusuf and other unnamed figures around Reform of amplifying “really quite vile positions” on race, ethnicity and nationality.
‘How it plays out … I don’t know’
The opprobrium is real — but so too is the Tories’ electoral plight.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has insisted he won’t call an early election, with the next not due until mid-2029. But it remains in his power to pull the plug when an opportunity arises.
All evidence points towards the Conservatives doing dismally if that happens any time soon. Kevin Hollinrake, the party chairman, admitted on Monday that it “doesn’t look winnable outright by anybody.”
A third shadow cabinet minister sounded softer in their opposition to a deal with Reform. They argued that while the Tories would not want to be shackled to Farage’s party, they did not want to see a “monster” coalition either between Labour and the Greens, Liberal Democrats and nationalist parties.
“How the world plays out when you actually live it, I don’t know,” they added. “We’ll just have to make whatever decision we think is in the best interests of the country at the time.”
Tiny changes to vote share would mean big changes to seat numbers in the multi-party world: “1% is the new 5%,” as a fourth shadow cabinet minister put it. A poll of 15,765 people by the firm More in Common suggests the balance of seats will be highly volatile depending on how badly the vote splits between parties of the right.
The self-funded survey, dated Aug. 21 to Sept. 21, projected Labour would be the largest party by far on 250 seats — ahead of Reform UK on 147 and the Tories on 125. A mere three- to four-point swing from the Conservatives to Reform or vice versa, however, would put either of those parties ahead of Labour.
The Conservatives and Reform attract different demographics of voter, though; a More in Common poll of 2,041 people on Sept. 25-29 found that those on the lowest incomes were more likely to back Reform than the Tories (23% to 20%), and for those on the highest incomes it was the other way round (23% to 13%).
This suggests there will be many seats where Labour comes through the middle and wins on a low vote share, like it did in 2024, said More in Common Executive Director Luke Tryl. Tryl added: “We’ll especially see this if Burnham manages to recreate Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 coalition of Labour and Green supporters, tapping into that 40% of voters. It wasn’t enough for Corbyn to win a majority, but with a split right, it’d definitely be enough for Burnham.”
Hence both the Tories and Reform — wary of a tactical voting stampede — are arguing they are the best choice to win outright. Yusuf told GB News Tuesday: “It is clear the only party of the right that has a serious chance of a majority in parliament is Reform.”
But most of all, the Conservatives just don’t want to talk about it. A fifth shadow cabinet minister said “voters on the right really hate blue-on-blue” and want the Tories to focus on attacking the Labour government.
Here come the think tanks
This dilemma means some outriders are now caught in the middle, unable to choose firmly between the Tories and Reform.
Hosting its reception across the canal from the conference center on Monday night was the Centre for Government Reform think tank, run by former civil servant Ameer Kotecha. The group was at Reform’s conference too; it appears to have the blessing of senior figures in both parties.
Kotecha took a deliberate decision to have politicians from both parties on its board — the right-wing Tory peers Theodore Agnew and John Nash alongside Reform UK’s Scottish Leader Malcolm Offord. It is working on cuts to civil service headcount and getting more private sector expertise into government, which Kotecha calls the “plumbing” of the state.
“It’s important that we speak to both sides,” he told POLITICO. “We need to keep the hopper wide; if you’re talking about the really elite business talent for example, they’re quite often not yet willing to pin their colors to any one party mast.”
Others would prefer to see any sense of a deal closed off. Also hosting events on the conference fringe was Prosper UK, a center-right group led by figures including the former Scottish Conservative Leader Ruth Davidson. It will push for the party to win back liberal-minded voters who once backed the party and now support the Liberal Democrats in the south of England. It is a tricky electoral coalition.
‘We honestly believe now’
The mood at this week’s Birmingham jamboree can only be understood by looking to the political horizon.
The Conservatives are still trailing Reform in national polls, but unlike last year, members and aides have some confidence that — even if they cannot win an election now — the polls may be reaching an inflection point that would restore their status as the main challengers to the Labour Party.
The Tories hope to paint themselves as the voices of economic competence; a party that sees itself as having become more united as their rivals march further to the right, while facing pressure from the hard-right Restore.
“It’s not just bad blood, is it? I think we honestly believe now,” said a sixth shadow cabinet minister. “We do get a lot of support back from people who went to Lib Dems and if we did a deal with Reform, all that goes out the window.”
The first shadow cabinet minister quoted in this story said that local Conservative associations, which they visit regularly, used to ask constantly about a coalition. “And now nobody does,” they argued. “There are a lot of people who, having seen another year of Reform, don’t like what they see.”
The realities are still there, and grim for the Conservatives. But they are simply less stark than they were a year ago.
As the fifth shadow cabinet minister quoted in this story put it: “I’m not worried that we’re going to get wiped off the face of the map any more.”
