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POLITICS EXPLAINED

Would a Tory-Reform electoral pact really be ‘unassailable’?

If twice as many voters support Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage than back Labour, should Keir Starmer fear his opponents working together at the ballot box, asks John Rentoul

Friday 24 January 2025 21:00 GMT
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A new Techne UK opinion poll for The Independent puts Labour, the Conservatives and Reform in what is in effect a three-way tie, on 25 per cent, 24 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.

As Michela Morizzo, Techne’s chief executive, observes, the Tories and Reform combined have the support of 48 per cent of voters, twice as many as Labour. If the “centre right” were to combine, they would be “unassailable”, she said.

It is true that if Tory and Reform candidates stood down in each other’s favour, and all of each party’s supporters voted for a single “centre right” candidate in every constituency, the joint Tory-Reform ticket would win an even more sweeping victory than Labour did last year.

This is Nigel Farage’s plan, according to Ben Habib, Reform UK’s former deputy leader, who said: “Nigel’s aim is to set up the best possible negotiating position he can between now and 2028.” If Reform overtakes the Tories consistently in the opinion polls, Farage believes he could negotiate an electoral pact from a position of strength.

What is to stop such a deal happening?

It would be hard to persuade the Conservatives to agree to a deal. Tory historians will know that it was an electoral pact in 1906 between the Liberals and the Labour Party that gave the newly founded workers’ party the foothold in parliament that it needed, eventually displacing the Liberal party as the Tories’ main opponent in a two-party system in 1923.

Students of more recent history will point to the failure of the Social Democratic Party to break through the first-past-the-post voting system after breaking away from Labour in 1981. After riding high in opinion polls – including periods when it matched or overtook the two main parties – the SDP, in alliance with the Liberals, won 26 per cent of the vote in the 1983 election but only 23 seats. Labour, on 28 per cent, lost badly to the Tories but retained 209 seats.

But Kemi Badenoch does not need to be a historian to know that a deal with Farage, who has pledged to destroy the Tory party, would be risky.

Would an electoral pact work?

There are reasons to be sceptical – apart from it probably being several years until the next general election, in which time stuff will happen. It is a common fallacy to assume that blocs of voters can be added together by horse-trading between national leaders, and that the people would meekly vote in the way that such leaders dictate.

This assumption has long been a feature of idealistic pluralism on the left. Neal Lawson, of Compass, a pressure group that advocates cross-party alliances against the right, recently pointed out that in every general election since 1979 except one (in 2015), the “progressive” parties (Labour, Liberals, Lib Dems, Greens and Nationalists) have won a greater share of the vote than the “regressive” ones (Conservatives, Ukip, Brexit and Reform).

This thesis was elegantly demolished by Peter Kellner this week: in many cases, he points out, voters for the Lib Dems and their predecessors would have preferred a Conservative government to a Labour one if they had been forced to make a choice.

Electoral pacts change voter behaviour

If party leaders agree to a deal, their supporters may not necessarily behave as expected. Many people support Reform because they are disgusted by the record of the Tory government. They might refuse to vote for a Tory candidate if there were an electoral pact, and might rather vote for an independent or stay at home. Similarly, many Tory voters have a low opinion of Farage and may refuse to vote for a Reform candidate.

What is worrying some of Keir Starmer’s advisers, however, is what I wrote about last weekend: that Reform may start to gain significant support from people who voted Labour last year but are disillusioned with the party in government. If that happens, and Reform becomes an anti-incumbent party as much as an anti-Tory one, it is possible that the voters will decide for themselves to vote for whichever candidate is best placed to defeat Labour.

This would not need an electoral pact, and could include former Labour voters with some “left-wing” attitudes voting for Reform, the Lib Dems, the Greens, or pro-Palestinian independents.

Starmer’s nightmare is that the anti-Tory tactical voting that delivered his huge victory last year turns into anti-Labour tactical voting that could deliver either a Tory-Reform majority or a more confused hung parliament.

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