It comes after the Tory leader did say that Conservative councillors should enter into coalition with Reform if that is the only way to take control of a local authority after next month’s local elections.
Both parties denied such a pact.
However, Conservative MPs are again speculating about a possible informal agreement between the Tories and Reform UK at the general election after her additional remarks over allowing Tory councillors to form coalitions with their Reform counterparts.
These polls represent her first electoral test as Tory leader, following her party’s loss in last year’s general election. She predicted her party’s decimation if the council elections mirrored July’s results.
In 2019 Farage said his then Brexit Party would not field any candidates against the Tories after then Tory leader Boris Johnson committed to leaving the EU.
With Reform now threatening both Labour and the Tories, Badenoch has been dogged by questions about what sort of deal she could pursue in the run-up to the general election, which the Government must call by mid-2029.
“A non-compete arrangement, such as we had with the Brexit Party in the 2019 election – I would have thought that does make a lot of sense,” Conservative MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown told The i Paper.
“I think one in politics one never says never to anything. So, who knows what will happen in the next four years or so?,” he added.
An ‘understood accommodation’
A third Tory MP told The i Paper they had been thinking about an informal pact with Reform (Photo: Peter Byrne/PA Wire)
“Both of us are on the right of centre, and if Reform against Conservative candidates end up with a Labour MP, then everybody loses out,” the MP told The i Paper.
“I can see why it might be a moderately sensible thing to do that.
A third Tory MP told The i Paper they had been thinking about an informal pact with Reform. “I’m not against it in principle, but it depends on a lot of things and it’s still early days. But I am making a point of being friendly to them when I see them in Parliament,” they said.
“I have said categorically that I am not doing deals with Reform. Nigel Farage has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative Party,” she said.
Meanwhile, within the Parliamentary Tory Party there is a determined effort to keep the right of the party both united and influential.
“It’s persisted as opposed to other groups which are on ice,” one Tory insider told The i Paper.
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“It also emphasises how much the tribes are held together via social bonds. The invitation ‘Come for a drink with Sir John’ is appealing to impressionable new MPs.”
“Anything can happen in politics, as we’ve seen with Donald Trump, with Brexit, with Covid, but at this moment in time I take as I find, which is what Kemi has said,” the Tory MP told The i Paper.
Another Conservative MP on the left of the party, asked by text whether they would be in favour of a non-compete pact with Reform ahead of the general election, simply replied with the vomiting emoji.
Reform appears to share the sentiment. “The Tories broke Britain for 14 years. They are the architects of net zero and mass immigration. We have no intention of doing deals with the Tories. They can never be trusted ever again,” a Reform UK spokesman said.
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