I’ll be doing, hopefully tomorrow, a ‘Sceptic Peg’ prediction for the Shropshire North by-election but in the meantime I’d like to draw reader’s attention to an article by Lord Norman Tebbit about this contest. Lord Tebbit appears to believe that the Tories will face a bigger challenge than they did at the Bexley and Old Sidcup by-election and that challenge will come from Reform.
Lord Tebbit said in the Daily Telegraph:
I doubt that many long-term Conservatives would be tempted to defect to the increasingly green-tinted Liberal Democrats or the sluggish and divided Labour Party of Sir Keir Starmer. However, Richard Tice’s Reform UK is a different matter. It has roots in the Brexit movement and champions anti-statist, neo-Thatcherite economic and social attitudes which could be attractive to Conservative voters harbouring doubts about Boris Johnson.
He might be correct. With a Conservative government that seems to be the Lib Dems in disguise, with all the negative connotations that this brings, regular Tory voters might be tempted to plump for a genuinely conservative party rather than the Tories. After all there are an increasing number of people it appears who are pissed off with voting blue but getting green, yellow and red instead.
Yes Tebbit is probably right, I was a staunch supporter of the Conservative party for many years but I can’t support the party now. Reform is almost a perfect copy of the right wing of the old Conservative party and having resigned from the modern travesty that is certainly not the Conservative party I will be voting for and supporting Reform at least for the foreseeable future. I look forward to your article with interest.
Tebbit is correct that Reform is a danger to the Tories either as a direct threat to some seats or a secondary threat because Reform will bleed off Tory votes allowing the Lib Dems or worse to take the seat. There’s some Reform policies that I vehemently disagree with but on the whole they are promoting policies that the Tories should do but do not.