It’s a windy March morning and I’m standing in the forecourt of a small service station that has been re-dressed in Reform teal.
Across the petrol station’s price board in giant lettering reads Reform Refuel: 25p off with Farage. A gaggle of journalists, TV cameras, and photographers have gathered, alongside some curious locals.
Alan Graves, Reform’s Derbyshire County Council leader, arrives to fill up in his turquoise Bentley. Reform’s most prominent Conservative defector, Robert Jenrick, is hanging around the forecourt waiting for Nigel Farage, who arrives soon after us, swarmed by cameras as he steps out of a Land Rover in flat cap, barbour jacket and cords.
Soon, Jenrick is up the ladder changing the petrol prices as Farage stands below. For one day only, Reform had struck a deal with the owner of this independent garage to take 25p off a litre of fuel.
Reform UK struck a deal with the owner of this independent petrol station in Derbyshire to temporarily take 25p off a litre of fuel
The duo brought the national media to this small forecourt in the Peak District in Derbyshire to demand the government reverse planned fuel duty rises by cutting green spending: “We will spend the next few months trying to shame Rachel Reeves into cancelling [the 5p] rise in fuel duty in September. But if she doesn’t – whether because she’s running scared of the Greens or in hock to her far-left backbenchers – then Reform will reverse it in our first budget.”
Soon the stunt was plastered over social media and Farage’s typically bombastic news conference ran on live television.
Meanwhile, over on the X platform, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch was busily taking a similar position on fuel duty, posting: “Labour know exactly what a fuel duty hike will do to hardworking families, but they’re doing it anyway. It’s wrong. That’s why last week the Conservatives put down a motion in parliament to force a vote to stop them”.
Kemi Badenoch during a visit to Amery Construction Ltd in Ickenham. Pic: PA
Two parties pushing the same policy, but the Conservative leader was outdone by her arch rival Farage and arch nemesis Jenrick as their publicity stunt caught all the eyeballs. Reform UK has made it its business to capture the attention economy as it tries to put the oldest party in the world out of business for good. Welcome to the battle for the right, in which the Conservatives and Reform appear to be in a fight to the death.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in 2019 Farage’s Brexit Party did an electoral pact with the Conservatives – deciding not to contest the 317 seats the Tories won in the 2017 election in order to get Boris Johnson into government and Brexit across the line.
In 2023, Farage attended Conservative Party conference, receiving a hero’s welcome from right-wing Tories at a Liz Truss fringe event before partying with Priti Patel, the now shadow foreign secretary, later in the evening. Back then, there was open talk that Farage might rejoin the party after decades of campaigning against it.
Nigel Farage takes a seat at the 2023 Conservative Party conference. Pic: PA
But then, before the 2024 general election, Farage announced he was taking over Reform and went on to win five seats, with 14.3% of the vote, as the Tories had their worst ever result and saw their parliamentary ranks reduced to 121.
The die was cast; since then Reform has gone on to win a by-election, and take control of a dozen councils across England and two mayoralties. Reform has also seen its own ranks swell as disaffected Tories jump ship.
It leapfrogged the Conservatives as the insurgent party of the right, leading in over 240 polls since the general election: Farage no longer toys with joining the Tories or doing an electoral deal; he wants to destroy them.
So does Jenrick, who I have come to Buxton to interview. This former young Tory once campaigned to remain in the EU and sat in Rishi Sunak’s cabinet. Now he’s Farage’s right-hand man and undoubtedly the Reform leader’s biggest Tory scalp.
Robert Jenrick
When I ask him about this political journey, he says quitting the Tories was hard: “If anyone thinks it’s an easy thing to do, to leave a party that you’ve been a part of since you were 16 years of age, then they don’t understand what this is about.
“I came to the conclusion over a long period of time that the Tory party hadn’t really learned the lessons of the mistakes they made in office. It wasn’t changing.
“There have been millions of people who have always voted Conservative – out of force of habit, or because they thought the party was the best placed to do what they wanted to do, [and] shared their values – who have deserted the Conservative party and concluded it’s failed.”
A former Conservative leadership contender, his betrayal has left a bitter taste in his former party; his former colleagues are adamant that Jenrick’s defection was driven by ambition rather than principle. He quit the shadow front bench of a party that risks being gutted in May’s local elections and is now Reform’s second-in-command – the chancellor of the next government if Reform wins. “I’m not embarrassed to say that I’m ambitious,” he says.
Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage
He is not the only big name to defect; Reform looks for politicians with ministerial experience to join its ranks as it eyes the prospect of government at the next election. There are now over 20 former or current parliamentarians that have joined Reform and Jenrick insists that the influx of former Conservative cabinet ministers is not putting Reform voters off. “Reform voters and supporters time after time are saying to me ‘Rob, why didn’t you do this months ago? You share our values. You have been on our side for a long time’.”
They may share values – but Jenrick is less keen on sharing voters, and outright rejects the prospect of any accommodation, merger, or pact between Reform and the Conservatives, saying the only way to unite the right is “behind Reform and Nigel”.
“People who say there should be some kind of pact or deal misunderstand why people are voting Reform or are drawn to Reform. There are millions of people who feel incredibly angry and disillusioned and frustrated… and those people don’t want to see Nigel Farage doing a deal with the Tory party.”
Robert Jenrick, right, fills up
Analysis from Sky News and exclusive polling with Ipsos appears to back up Jenrick’s argument. At first glance, the combined polling of Reform and the Tories points to a right-wing coalition that could take power at the next general election. Latest polls from YouGov put the former on 23% and the latter on 17%.
But dig deeper and it seems that a Reform-Conservative pact isn’t very popular among supporters, according to new Ipsos polling for Sky News. Nearly as many of their own supporters are against a pact as are for it. Sky’s election analysts say that a Tory-Reform pact could risk losing votes from their own supporters; just one in four Reform and Tory supporters say they are open to voting for each other’s parties. And that could cause problems.
The polling reveals another possibility – that a right-wing challenge could throw up a stronger alliance on the left to stop Reform.
Our polling shows that pacts on the left are much more popular with their supporters than ones on the right – with +2% net support among right-wing supporters, and +23% net support on the left. So there is a real risk that if the liberal-left were to join up – that’s Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens – they could overtake a divided right.
It is a prospect that another Conservative defector to Reform, Danny Kruger, acknowledges as he urges Conservatives to give way and allow Reform to become the party of the right: “There is a real danger that some kind of terrible coalition of the left wins the next election because the right is split.
Danny Kruger, a Conservative defector to Reform
“I don’t think there is a future for the Conservative Party as a national party. I don’t think it will disappear altogether but I think that its days as the principal challenger to Labour from the right are over. I regret the split on the right but I think it is necessary now that we move the principal vehicle of centre-right politics.
“I hope it becomes increasingly obvious that if you want to change the government, if you want the centre-right to be in power, Reform is the only option, and that means taking voters from the Conservatives.”
But pollster Luke Tryl argues that what is happening on the right of politics is far more complicated than just one party eclipsing the other.
Luke Tryl, executive director of More in Common UK
“It’s a mistake to assume Tory and Reform voters are just different versions of each other. On some big questions, they’re in different places, so Tory voters have much lower approval of Donald Trump. In fact, Tory voters of any party voters – except for the Greens – are the most likely to disapprove of Donald Trump. Reform voters are more mixed.
“On questions about the economy, lots of Reform voters want big nationalisation. Tories are much more sceptical of that. So it’s not a case that you can just sort of add them together, they’re quite distinctive and I sometimes categorise it as the Tories now are more institutionalist right, Reform are more insurgent right.”
Former home secretary, Amber Rudd, thinks the Conservative Party needs to stop fighting on Farage’s turf and rebuild in the centre-right. The former home secretary has helped set up a new pressure group for British Conservativism, Prosper, in recent weeks to galvanise voters on the centre-right who feel politically homeless, and to rebuild her party from the centre.
Amber Rudd
“I think that there are a lot of Conservatives, and I am one of them, who believe that Reform, and Nigel Farage particularly, would be damaging for this country. And so we have to try to give the public an alternative to that choice. I think it is worth trying because I can’t just sit it out at the moment and see this terrible choice between Starmer and Farage.
“I totally reject that there’s anything centre-right about what Nigel Farage proposes. If you look at something like on immigration, which is a key issue for the public, they have unequivocally said that they want to do something like what has been done in America, where we’ve seen ICE [and] the Donald Trump removal process for what he considers to be illegal immigrants… which has killed people. Now, the idea of that on the streets of London is horrific.”
Current Conservative chairman, Kevin Hollinrake, says the key is putting clear blue water between themselves and Reform when it comes to the economy, welfare, and state intervention.
Kevin Hollinrake, chairman of the Conservative Party
“There are so many things about Reform’s policies that are not Conservative, that are not right of centre. Nationalising industry, increasing welfare by taking off the two-child benefit cap – which they’ve put back on now of course, temporarily, I don’t know when they’ll change their policy again… hundreds of billion pounds of unfunded spending promises.
“This is not a conservative party, this is not a battle for the right, as they say. This is conservatism versus populism. We need to make the case where there’s only one choice on the right.”
Our research suggests that choice is currently not the Conservatives. A Reform Voting Index created by Sky News’ election analysts, gauging which of the two right-wing parties currently holds the advantage in each constituency across Britain, finds that Reform has a clear lead in three times as many seats as the Conservatives – ahead in 316 seats, with the Tories leading in just 93, with a further 223 seats too close to call.
When you look at Reform and the Conservatives, the personalities, the politics, and the polling all point to a prolonged fight. A pact doesn’t look like it would resolve the battle for the right, and blood spilt between the two sides makes a peace deal look near-impossible to secure anyway.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at a local election rally in Croydon on 28 March. Pic: PA
The Conservatives think their best hope is that the Reform surge will burn itself out – be that through a patchy record in local government, divisive culture wars, or Farage fatigue – and lapsed Tory voters will look again at Badenoch and the Conservatives.
Our polling shows she is more popular among the current set of Reform supporters than Farage is amongst current Conservative backers, suggesting she might have a better chance of winning back lost voters.
Read more:
What’s happening with this year’s local elections in England?
Reform reports ‘family voting’ claims to police
But Reform very clearly has the upper hand – be it in the attention economy at the rural petrol station, or the polls – and Farage will want to press home that advantage in the May elections.
It is very unclear how this feud will end, but what is more certain is the battle for the right looks set to run right up the next general election – and it could prove to be Labour’s best chance of getting back in.
