Tories and Reform: From feud to love-in?
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Is this the shape of things to come?
Are Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK about to bury the hatchet and work together?
Tory and Reform MPs joined forces to back a Commons move by Mr Farage to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.
It was the biggest and most high-profile display of co-operation between these hitherto sworn enemies seen in parliament so far.
Could it be a pointer to some sort of arrangement or pact in opposition to Labour, the Liberal Democrats and other left-leaning parties after the next election?
The issue that brought about the new apparent love-in between the feuding parties on the right of UK politics was a 10-minute rule bill moved by Mr Farage.
Surrounded by opponents from the Lib Dems and SNP, Mr Farage was shouted down throughout his speech, before the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey launched an angry onslaught opposing his bill.
Of course, withdrawing from the ECHR is an issue on which the Conservatives and Reform UK agree. But quite often the big parties ignore Commons motions moved by small parties.
Not this time. Voting was 96 MPs in favour and 154 against Mr Farage’s ECHR Withdrawal Bill, with 63 Labour MPs, 64 Liberal Democrats and Jeremy Corbyn’s band of 10 independents voting against.
Kemi Badenoch led 87 Conservative MPs into the Aye lobby alongside Mr Farage, his Reform UK colleagues Richard Tice, Lee Anderson and Danny Kruger, who was a teller, and a few Northern Ireland MPs.
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The Conservative MPs backing Mr Farage’s motion included most of the shadow cabinet. The Tory grandee Sir John Whittingdale was the Reform UK leader’s other teller.
After the vote, Mr Farage thanked former cabinet ministers Suella Braverman and Sir Gavin Williamson and – most significantly – shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick for co-signing his bill.
While Mrs Badenoch has publicly ruled out a pact with Reform UK, Mr Jenrick told Sky News during the Tory conference earlier this month it was “not a priority”.
The breakdown of the voting numbers tells us that without the 63 Labour MPs voting against, Mr Farage would have won the vote, although victory on a ten-minute rule bill is purely symbolic.
And indeed, until a last-minute plea by pro-Europe Labour MPs led by Stella Creasy, the Labour leadership’s plan had been to ignore the vote and abstain.
But the party’s high command is understood to have been warned that, purely symbolic or not, allowing Farage’s bill to be passed would send a terrible signal to the UK’s European neighbours.
And so the new government chief whip Jonathan Reynolds relented and ruled that while ministers should abstain and not take part, backbenchers could vote against Mr Farage if they wished.
Ed Davey later claimed the credit for defeating Mr Farage, however. “We just defeated Nigel Farage’s bill in parliament to tear up people’s rights and withdraw from the ECHR,” he said.
“Farage wants to do away with the Britain Churchill built and turn it into a version of Trump’s America. We stopped him.”
But could this vote signal that some form of coalition politics may be on the way back in the Commons, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats v the Conservatives and Reform UK?
