For a party so used to seeing itself as the natural home of the British right, Reform UK’s challenge cuts deeper than electoral competition. It calls into question the Conservatives’ sense of where they belong: leading the right, with any challengers on its fringes. Listening to many of the speakers at the party’s conference here in Birmingham, that sense of displacement is hard to miss. Winning back Nigel Farage’s voters becomes a way of reclaiming something the party feels is rightfully its own. But how much of Reform’s politics will it absorb in the process?
On net zero, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch seems to be borrowing from Farage’s playbook. Her pledge to scrap the Climate Change Act drew criticism last year from Theresa May, who called it a “catastrophic mistake”. There is something revealing about a Conservative leader moving closer to Reform while a former Conservative prime minister protests. The fight for Reform voters, then, is becoming a fight over which parts of its own record the Conservative party is prepared to abandon.
The overlap extends beyond climate policy. Both parties now promise to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act and bar asylum claims from people who enter the country illegally. The Conservatives propose a “Removals Force”; Reform offers a “UK Deportation Command”. Their plans differ in detail, but on these central commitments the dividing lines are difficult to see. Are the Conservatives offering a different direction, or a more competent route to the same destination?
When I asked Conservative MP Victoria Atkins, the party’s shadow environment secretary, how the Conservatives could oppose Reform without becoming it, she pointed to the party’s principles: a commitment to free markets, communities and family. Reform, she says, is “not doing this deep thinking”.
“A catchy headline is all well and good, but it ain’t going to help you if there’s a bad harvest, or if your town is flooded, or if your family business is under threat,” she told me at the fringe event organised by the nonprofit research agency More in Common. It is an argument for taking the work of government seriously. But it leaves open where that work will produce a different policy.
At an Institute for Government and YouGov panel, Baroness Finn, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, offered a more explicit distinction. Reform is “fantastically left-wing on the economy”, she said. Yet even while challenging Reform’s policies, Finn is also thinking about what it would take to “unite the right” and bring Farage’s supporters together with her own.
In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, Badenoch drew a line against cooperation with Reform. She said she would prefer another general election to a deal with Farage if no party secured a majority. But said she wanted its voters to “come back” to the Conservatives.
The distinction is clear at the level of electoral cooperation but the question remains how she will differentiate her party’s policies from those of Reform’s while attempting to bring those voters back.
The advice from YouGov’s Political Research Manager Patrick English was to establish clear distinctions, “so the voters know what the difference is and why the difference exists”, while addressing the concerns that drew them towards rival parties in the first place.
English pointed to Labour under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer as a warning, arguing that its pursuit of Reform voters exposed its own left flank. For the Conservatives, there is a similar danger: becoming so absorbed in winning back one group that they put others beyond reach.
At an event focused on devolution, cities and mayoralties, Andy Street, the former West Midlands mayor, was keen to emphasise his support for Badenoch. “The whole purpose of Prosper UK is to get a centre-right government elected,” he tells me, referring to the centre-right policy organisation he co-founded in January. Where he might disagree with some party members is on which voters will see the leader become prime minister.
He pointed to the seats the Conservatives lost to the Liberal Democrats across southern England in 2024. “Unless we win those back, we will not form the government,” he said. “You have, therefore, to think about what is the policy offer to attract those voters back.” That could become awkward for a party preoccupied with winning seats from Reform.
These questions, though, have not prevented a more confident mood in Birmingham compared to the conference in Manchester last year. Fringe events have been packed. At the More in Common event, Conservative party chairman Kevin Hollinrake described a more united party with a leader and plans it believes in. But he acknowledged the damage left by 14 years in office. “People do trust Kemi, and they don’t trust us,” he said. His hope is that Badenoch can rebuild that trust. Recovering voters from Reform will require persuading them to reconsider the party they rejected.
Hollinrake also identified a reason to look beyond Farage’s supporters. He argued that hostility towards Reform could help the Conservatives through tactical voting. That opportunity depends on voters seeing them as an acceptable alternative to the party they want to keep out.
The answers I heard in Birmingham suggest the Conservatives can oppose Reform without becoming it. But competence and a more reassuring tone will not, by themselves, establish a different political offer.
Atkins and Finn must show where their principles lead to different choices; Street wants an offer that reaches beyond Farage’s electorate. The party’s renewed confidence gives Badenoch an opportunity to make that broader case. Moving closer to Reform on major policies makes it harder to explain why voters should see the Conservatives as an alternative.
