Why there won't be a Tory-Reform pact

Labour owes its landslide to the division of the right-wing vote. Fortunately for Keir Starmer, the division is likely to continue

Conservatives who advocate an electoral pact with Reform might usefully start with a short news item in the Times of 3rd October 1903. It reported that the Liberals would run only one candidate in the two-seat constituency of Leicester and make room for a Labour candidate. At a meeting of local Liberals, “a letter was read from Mr Gladstone, chief Liberal Whip, congratulating the Liberal Association on affording practical proof of their wish to give Mr MacDonald an open field for his candidature on behalf of Labour”.

By standing aside in Leicester, the Liberals launched the parliamentary career of Labour’s first prime minister—Ramsay MacDonald in 1924—and unwittingly triggered the process that led to their own collapse as a major national party.

Should that worry today’s Tories? There are two ways to look at the Lib-Lab pact of which Leicester was an example. The first is that it led to the decisive breakthrough in Labour’s fortunes. The Liberals stood aside in 31 seats. Labour won 24 of them in the 1906 general election. It won only five other seats. Without the pact it would have been marooned, and might have ended up being subsumed by the Liberals. The possible lesson for today’s Tories: don’t do any deals with Reform. It might give Nigel Farage his golden ticket to the big time and end up putting you out of business.

On the other hand, Kemi Badenoch’s troops might note that the Liberals won the 1906 election by a landslide. Labour fielded only 51 candidates and stood aside everywhere else. Without the pact, the Liberals might have won fewer seats. The alternative lesson for today’s Tories: if Reform stands aside in your target seats, you will win more of them, and have a better chance of kicking Labour out.

Which of these views makes more sense today? If there is to be a pact, the most obvious agreement would be for both parties to stand aside where the other came first or second last year. Such a deal would mean the Tories having a clear run in the 121 seats they are defending, the 219 where they came second to Labour and the 64 where they came second to the Liberal Democrats. Total: 404. Reform’s tally: the five seats it won and 89 where the party came second to Labour. (Reform did not come second in any seats won by other parties.) Total: 94. It would not matter whether the Tories, Reform or both fought the other 145 seats up for grabs throughout Britain. Neither party has a chance of winning any of them.

So there would be a big discrepancy in the number of seats fought by each party. What about the seats won? The table below holds the key to what might happen:

First, let us suppose that Labour does badly but not catastrophically, and loses every seat where its majority is currently less than 10 per cent. It would lose 85 seats to the Conservatives, just three to Reform and 16 seats to other parties. Labour would be down to 307 MPs and lose its majority. However, it would face 206 Tory MPs (121 current seats plus 85 gained) and just eight Reform MPs (five plus three). This would do nothing for Nigel Farage’s ambition to become prime minister.

So why on earth would he agree to such a deal? One possible reason is that he thinks Reform will do far better than that. If Reform can topple every Labour MP with a majority of up to 20 per cent, it would gain 30 seats and bring the total to 35. If Tory candidates with Reform support do as well, the Conservatives would gain 156 seats and end up with 277.

There would now be a significant block of Reform MPs, but they would still be outnumbered eight-to-one by Conservatives in the House of Commons.

In fact, the one thing a pact would almost certainly rule out is a Conservative majority. In its big victories of 1997 and 2024, Labour captured a clutch of seats from third place. To win outright next time, the Tories would need to do the same­­—that is, fight some of the very seats that a pact would rule out. Without fighting those seats, they need to win virtually all of the constituencies where they came second, including such seats as Brent East, Leeds West (Rachel Reeves’s home turf) and Stretford & Urmston, where Labour enjoyed big majorities even in the bleakest Corbyn years.

In short, it’s hard to see a pact leading to any outcome that would give either Farage or the Tories what they want.

There is, though, a different way to look at the numbers. Suppose such a deal had been in place last year, and a single Con/Reform candidate scooped up all the votes in each seat that the two parties secured separately. For example, Labour gained Mansfield with a majority of 3,485. Steve Yemm, the successful candidate, won 16,048 votes. But the Tories (12,563) and Reform (9,386) won 21,949 between them. Had a single candidate attracted all those votes, they would have won the seat with a majority of 5,901. Across Britain, the combined Con-Reform vote would have defeated the successful Labour candidate in 143 seats. Labour would have won just 268 seats, well short of a majority.

The limits to that analysis are obvious. Whatever the national picture, it is unrealistic to assume that Tory and Reform votes are interchangeable. Plenty of Conservatives hate Reform and vice versa. Even so, if both parties insist on fighting every seat, then, like last year, they will split the anti-Labour vote. Whatever Farage and Badenoch think, Keir Starmer definitely hates the idea of a pact. He wants his opponents on the right to carry on fighting each other.

Who, then, would like a deal? There is one obvious group: those who favour a united front on the right of British politics—not just an electoral pact but a full partnership of like-minded colleagues. A marriage, not a one-night stand. But unlike two lovers tying the knot, political marriages can never be equal. Even if Farage ever were tempted by the idea of a united front at the next election, he would have to accept being the junior partner both during and after the vote. Do you think he could ever do that? Neither do I.

There remains one further possibility: that instead of a national carve-up of seats, some local Conservative and Reform activists do deals in specific constituencies. This might have a similar effect as in 1906, this time with the Tories gaining a few extra seats, and Reform improving on last year’s five-seat tally. To my Tory friends I say: beware. In the short run you might benefit. But in the long run, as with the Liberals after 1906, it’s something you might come to regret. If you want to be sure of your party’s survival, you need to fight Reform to the death. Be grateful that Farage is likely to be as opposed to pacts as you should be.

Thisd post was first published by Prospect