If the headless Tories panic now, they risk being eaten alive by Nigel Farage

The Conservatives are at a crossroads after their historic defeat, and will need time to consider which direction to take. Just don’t turn hard-right, warns Andrew Grice

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK took more than four million votes – more than the Liberal Democrats (AFP via Getty)

The joke about the Conservative Party having only two settings – complacency and panic – was never truer than it is today. After being complacent about the threat from Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party, the Tories are now in full panic mode after losing more seats than at any previous election – and mostly thanks to Farage’s efforts.

Many pessimistic Tories now fear their party will be swallowed by Reform. After becoming an MP at the eighth attempt, Farage made clear he is on track with his project to build a mass movement to supplant the Tories as the main challenger to Labour at the 2029 election.

“This is just the first step,” he warned ominously. “There is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it.”

Many right-wing Tories will agree, even though Farage is no centrist but a populist nationalist on the right. But the Conservatives, even at their lowest ebb, would be foolish to rush into Farage’s arms. He is a one-man band who falls out with most people he works with, and will crush them. Someone will have to remake the TV series, I May Destroy You.

The Tory right choose not to see that. They have foolishly convinced themselves that Rishi Sunak lost this election because he is not “a real Conservative”. That is nonsense. He aped Farage on immigration by making an undeliverable promise to “stop the boats” by sending migrants to Rwanda. He cut taxes when a majority of the public wanted investment in public services. He diluted net zero measures and allowed an anti-woke culture war.

The Tories who want an even further lurch to the right – by scrapping the 2050 net zero target and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights – should learn the real lesson from the party’s catastrophic defeat.

Fundamentally, it wasn’t about the lack of a purist ideology, but a dramatic loss of competence. It was symbolised by Partygate (and Boris Johnson’s lies about the parties) and Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, which moved the opinion polls more than anything else and laid the ground for this election drubbing. Labour won the trust of enough voters by offering competence and stability. That Keir Starmer could claim with a straight face that “stability is change” is an indictment on the Tories for the chaos on their watch.

Only when the Tories regain a reputation for economic competence will they win back trust. Hopping into bed with Farage would hinder this painstaking process. He would propel even more voters in the southern blue wall to the rejuvenated Liberal Democrats, when the Tories need to win them back as the first stage of their recovery.

It’s a mistake to think Farage can help the Tories regain the red wall in the North and Midlands. The voters who swung behind the Tories after the 2016 Brexit referendum were not natural Tories, but disenchanted Labour supporters. Johnson’s 2019 coalition was never going to last.

Kemi Badenoch will begin the Conservative leadership contest as favourite, as other big names who would have been expected to run lost their seats (PA Wire)

The temptation for the grassroots Tory members will be to accommodate Farage to win back Reform voters to “unite the right”, just as it was united when Farage stood down his candidates in Tory-held seats in 2019. They should remember that when the Tories regained power in 2010, David Cameron won from the centre. The Tories need to elect a leader who will fight from the centre and take on Farage, rather than pander to him.

That person cannot be Suella Braverman, who wants Farage to rejoin the Tories. After retaining her seat, she seemed to appoint herself interim Tory leader, saying: “I want to briefly address the results in the rest of the country, and there is only one thing that I can say: Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that my party didn’t listen to you.”

With Penny Mordaunt (who could have won the leadership) and Grant Shapps (who never would have) out of the leadership race after losing their seats, Kemi Badenoch will start as the favourite – although that person often doesn’t win in Tory-land.

Badenoch doesn’t want a deal with Farage and should not let him set the agenda for the contest, but she does want to tack right and fuel the culture wars. Robert Jenrick will also offer a right-wing pitch. Priti Patel, the former home secretary, might be the one to watch: she is on the right, but has centrist admirers, and might win Johnson’s backing.

Jeremy Hunt kept his seat and would certainly offer a safe hand on the tiller. But he has run twice for the leadership and lost, and so might not stand again. He upset fellow centrists last time by rallying behind Sunak, rather than Tom Tugendhat, after his own elimination. Tugendhat will be a contender again, although he hasn’t held a senior cabinet post, and the most right-wing candidate usually wins after MPs choose a shortlist of two names for a ballot of grassroots members. James Cleverly would be a credible unity candidate, but might not run because his wife is recovering after cancer treatment.

The Tories should not rush into a leadership election. A period of sober reflection would be sensible. They should reflect on Farage’s ludicrous claim that the West provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the racist and bigoted remarks of Reform candidates; and Farage policies that received little attention during the campaign, such as shifting the NHS towards an insurance-based system. That’s no way to win back the Tories’ lost voters.

The Tories should choose a leader prepared to call out Reform for what it is – the nasty party. Otherwise, the Tories will again become it.