Rishi Sunak’s Disastrous Essay Competition:

Reasons people really shouldn’t vote Reform UK

As Reform UK gets closer to eclipsing the Conservatives in the polls, the Prime Minister and his team are desperately searching for the killer reason for voters not to desert them. They’ve experimented with a number of different ones, sometimes voiced directly while at other times tried out in the media via the extended Tory family:

Reason 1: “A vote for Reform is a vote for Keir Starmer”

At a February GB News “Town Hall” in County Durham, a despairing Tory voter asked why he shouldn’t vote for Reform UK. In his answer, pointedly declining to name his insurgent opponents, Sunak said:

“A vote for anyone who is not a Conservative candidate is simply a vote to put Keir Starmer into Number 10.”

It must have felt to the team in the bunker at No. 10 that this was something of a killer argument as it was heard repeatedly for several weeks. The problem was defining just how the Tories could be distinguished from Labour. For Sunak in County Durham, it was clear as he spoke of the common ground he shared with his questioner:

“We share the same values. Whether that's on controlling spending, cutting your taxes to ease the cost of living, making sure that we have strong borders.”

Even for a party circling the drain, highlighting the risks of allowing Labour in because of high taxes and uncontrolled immigration verges on the delusional. Surely there’s a better reason to vote Conservative.

Reason 2: Vote Conservative to ensure there’s a viable opposition.

By late March, the objective appeared to be more about avoiding electoral extinction rather than winning the election. And so Geoffrey Cox was wheeled out to try a different reason to vote Conservative. If current polling turned out to be accurate he warned, the Conservatives would have too few MPs to form a “credible opposition” and that, of course, would be “bad for democracy”.

Again, this too might have felt like a killer argument. After all, nobody wants to vote in a way that would be bad for democracy, do they?

But thinking about this for more than, say, thirty seconds causes one to reflect on the 14 years of disastrous government and the unforgiveable squandering of an 80-seat majority. Having failed to govern for such a long time, do we now believe they can become formidable in opposition? Anyone from Conservative Central Office dipping into the comments section of the Telegraph’s coverage of Cox’s intervention would have returned swiftly to the drawing board.

Reason 3: Reform has no policies

Now in ever decreasing circles, the party, via its outriders, is coming up with yet lamer reasons not to vote for Reform UK. Matthew Parris in The Spectator employed the rhetorical device of withering disdain:

“We could write instead, I suppose, about Reform, and what Nigel Farage is likely to do. We can do that in 40 words. Mr Farage will play peek-a-boo for a bit longer and finally emerge in some leading role in Reform, which will inflict serious damage on the Tories but, beyond that, never amount to much because they don’t really have any policies.”

Reform launched its manifesto – or “Contract with the people” – at its spring rally in Doncaster in February.  It was covered widely and enthusiastically. Simon Heffer wrote in the Telegraph:

“A smaller state, lower taxes, a one out, one in immigration policy, a deregulatory programme to capitalise on Brexit – and that is only the tip of the iceberg – sounded like everything Conservative voters in 2019 expected their party to do.”

Alright. So, it turns out that they have got policies – and conservative ones at that. Can anyone think of a better reason not to vote Reform?

Reason 4: Reform has got policies but they can’t say how they’ll fund them

The ball has now been passed to Daniel Hannan who, since being ennobled, has loyally put his shoulder to the wheel to hold up the Tory vote via his column in the Sunday Telegraph. In yesterday’s paper, he tried out the latest argument:

“Nobody disagrees with their basic list of policies. They simply have no realistic way of delivering them.”

Out-performing Matthew Parris in lazy journalism, Hannan neglected to consult the Contract with the people. In it, Reform boldly states that it will cancel net zero:

“Ditching Net Zero would save the public sector some £20 billion per year for the next 25 years, possibly more.”

And so, as the Tories continue to circle the drain, the search goes on for a credible reason for voters not to turn to Reform UK. If only they’d put as much energy and creativity into governing over the last 14 years as they are now putting into disparaging their opponents.