The former Brexit Party has become a Trussite party, carrying on the Tory civil war from outside

Reform UK is challenging the Liberal Democrats in the polls, writes John Rentoul

Ukip, the Brexit Party and now Reform aims to put pressure on the Conservative Party by threatening to steal its votes (Getty)

Nigel Farage is threatening to return to politics, while his former Brexit Party, now called Reform UK, is challenging the Liberal Democrats for third place in the opinion polls.

Reform, led by Richard Tice, is averaging 7 per cent in the polls, while the Lib Dems are on 8 per cent. In one poll two days ago the two parties were level, and there was a YouGov poll in mid-December that put Reform one point ahead.

This is bad news not just for Ed Davey, whose party is capable of winning parliamentary by-elections in safe Conservative seats but little else, but for Rishi Sunak. As with Ukip before the EU referendum, and the Brexit Party before the 2019 election, Reform is an electoral force acting mainly on the Tory party.

Its recent success – most pollsters didn’t list it separately last year because its support was so low – owes much to the Tory civil war. It continues to fight the Brexit fight, accusing the government of doing Brexit incorrectly and failing to take advantage of the opportunities waiting for us outside the EU; but it has become primarily a Trussite party. It argues for deep cuts in public spending – of the kind that Liz Truss herself shied away from during her leadership campaign because they were so obviously unpopular – and tax cuts.

Once again, it has become a home for disgruntled Tory supporters, who complain that the Tory party is led by the wrong sort of person. Once it was Remainers, then it was Brinos – people offering Brexit In Name Only – and now it is high-tax socialists, as Rishi Sunak and the majority of Tory MPs are often described. In each case, Ukip, the Brexit Party and now Reform aims to put pressure on the Conservative Party by threatening to steal its votes, thus leaving it vulnerable to defeat by Labour.

That is what is happening now, with research by Electoral Calculus showing that most of Reform’s new supporters are Tory defectors, and that many other former Tories say that they don’t know how they would vote, or that they won’t vote at all.

This might be encouraging for Sunak, in that he has a pool of potential Tory voters who could be attracted back to the fold. Reform’s success could suggest that the Labour lead in the opinion polls is soft, in that Reform supporters and don’t knows are strongly Tory-leaning, and in a general election some of them are likely to be persuadable by the Tories with the argument that they risk letting Labour in.

But in the meantime, Tice’s success is a headache for the prime minister.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator