Nigel Farage of the Reform Party has put out an offer for Conservative Party councillors to defect to the Reform Party.

This offer is being reported on by Guido Fawkes who said:

Farage is offering them a political “lifeline,” warning that sticking with the Tories could cost them their seats. Once again, he’s stepping on Conservative toes – this time not just by stealing votes, but by siphoning off their grassroots foot soldiers. Farage wrote:

“The Conservative Party is a busted flush – these 1,352 councillors are watching their time in office tick away, while they bicker over whether to choose a Leader with a sudden political conversion, or someone who refuses to leave the ECHR. I urge any Conservative councillors who believe in their country and share our values to join Reform UK as we build on the extraordinary inroads we made at the General Election.”

This might at first, if you are a Reform Party member or supporter or a proper conservative who’s still within the Conservative Party, look like a good idea, but there are some reasons that I believe make this a bad idea.

1. This offer is being made at the wrong time. With a leadership election in progress and the chance that the winning candidate might be a bit more genuinely conservative than some of the party’s previous leaders have been, gives Tory councillors every reason for sticking with the party. After all why throw in the towel with the Tories just as the party might be rediscovering the sort of policies that Britain needs? The time to make this offer would in my view be better at some point in the future if the new leader ends up in thrall to the CINO’s (Conservatives In Name Only) like Sunak, Johnson, May and Cameron were.

2. The Tories are doing surprisingly well in some of the local government byelections that have happened since the last General Election. The Tories even in their current debilitated and chaotic state have managed to take seats off of Labour. If the Tories are electorally improving, even by such a small amount and only in local government, then it adds incentive for Tory councillors to stay on board the Conservative Party ship.

3. Reform does not yet have an active and involved branch and branch membership system. They at present may not have the footsoldiers that are needed to support a councillor at both election time as a way of getting the vote out and keeping the candidate or councillor’s name in the public eye during pre-election times. A Tory councillor may well be worried about losing the support network of the party’s footsoldiers if they defected to Reform.

4. Even if this plan does succeed and Reform is inundated by disgruntled Tory councillors, what guarantee is there that these ex Tory councillors will be the sort of politicians that the Reform party want or need? There’s a strong possibility that too many of those who might be tempted to make the switch might not be doing so for genuine reasons of seeing more value in the Reform Party than the Tories, but because they are cynical opportunists. Reform might end up with a whole tranche of self serving Lib Dems in Tory clothing, the very group that has done massive damage to the Tories since the Cameron days.

As I said earlier, this is one of those ideas that sound good and which will get a lot of attention but might end up either being a total failure or bring a whole host of problems for Reform. For what it’s worth my view is that rather than target Tory councillors, which might for reasons listed above, backfire, Reform should be going full on for former Labour voters or voters in traditionally Labour areas or those working class majority areas which have been shamefully left behind both politically and economically by the Labour and Conservative Parties.