They won’t get any seats – but Reform and Nigel Farage could still make election trouble for the Tories

Rishi Sunak’s warnings against the ex-Ukip leader’s outfit reveal a nervousness it will cost the Conservatives dearly – just when they need a lifeline, writes Kate Devlin

In 2019, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party stood only in seats where Labour was the main competition (Getty)

What’s in a name? Political ambition, perhaps. Last month, Reform UK subtly tweaked its name.

In future it is to be known as Reform UK: The Brexit Party. A shift that shows it hopes voters will remember its previous incarnation and vote for it again.

Why would that matter? After all, Reform may have hit double figures in some recent polls but it has never managed to win a seat at Westminster. Indeed, its now honorary president Nigel Farage has lost every time he’s stood to be an MP.

So why, then, was Rishi Sunak talking about them this weekend? In an interview, the prime minister warned that a vote for Reform was a vote to put Keir Starmer in Downing Street.

Then on Sunday, Reform leader Richard Tice denied suggestions that Conservative deputy chairman Lee Anderson was offered money to defect to the party. The Sunday Times reported Anderson had told Tory activists he had been offered “a lot of money” to join a “party which begins with an R”. Tice told the BBC that he had held “numerous discussions with Tory MPs” but no money had been offered.

Sunak and his MPs are not worried that Reform will win constituencies from them. But many Conservatives are nervous that they could take hundreds or even thousands of votes in very tight contests, splitting the vote and ensuring the Tories lose the seat.

Indeed, it has already happened. Last month, it effectively denied the Conservatives two by-election victories. The number of votes cast for Reform was higher than the winning Labour majority in both Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire.

In recent weeks, a sense of despair among Tory MPs has become more practical and pragmatic. A dramatic reshuffle which saw David Cameron return to the cabinet to become foreign secretary was welcomed. Many were also pleased that long-hoped-for tax cuts were announced in last week’s autumn statement, even if the country’s overall tax burden is still on course to hit a post-war high.

But there is a growing acceptance that many of these measures are too little, too late to actually make a difference. One former cabinet minister, a politician who’s been around the block, said to me last week that he feared there was nothing now that could move the dial. Voters had made up their minds and it was time for a Labour government. The focus now, he said, had to be on saving 200 seats. That admission is astonishing for a party that took 365 seats four years ago.

Hard as it is to believe, at one point Boris Johnson even boasted that he wanted to serve three terms as prime minister. All that now seems very far in the rearview mirror. Since then, of course, we have had the scandals of Partygate, that disastrous mini-Budget, followed by a cost of living crisis, high inflation and thousands facing higher mortgage bills every month, leaving the Tories trailing Labour in the polls.

Part of that 80-seat majority in 2019 was thanks to the Brexit Party. Or rather, in lots of seats, thanks to the absence of the Brexit Party. An internal revolt within the party forced Farage to stand down hundreds of candidates in Tory seats before that year’s general election. In the end, the Brexit Party stood only in seats where Labour was the main competition.

Many Tory MPs are now hoping something similar will happen this election around. But the party’s current leader Tice is digging in. He insists it will stand in every seat in the country at next year’s general election. The vagaries of the British political system suggest he is deeply unlikely to take any seats. But many Tory MPs face a nervous time worrying he could cost them theirs.