A bombshell new poll has shown significant support among Tory members for a merger with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The GB News host’s party significantly dented the Conservatives’ vote at July’s General Election as the Tories slumped to one of their worst-ever defeats.
As Rishi Sunak’s party lost 251 seats in a drubbing that left them with just 121 MPs and 23.7 percent of the vote, Reform came from nothing to win four million votes across the UK.
Although Mr Farage is one of only five Reform UK MPs, the party achieved 14.3 percent of the vote.
The results have prompted many to debate which direction the Conservatives should take once they elect a new leader, with many arguing they need to move to the Right to counter the Reform threat.
But a poll of 910 Conservative Party members for YouGov found that 42 percent wanted the Tories to go further and join forces with Mr Farage to form a single party.
YouGov said the move would be “radical” but divides Tory members, with 51 percent against it and 7 percent saying they do not know.
“Notably, more than twice as many strongly oppose any merger (31 percent) than strongly support one (14 percent), suggesting an attempted unification would struggle to carry a significant chunk of the party with it,” said YouGov’s summary of the polling.
“While support for a merger is clearer among certain sections of the party, it is never particularly overwhelming – even among the most supportive segments, those who voted for Liz Truss as leader or voted Leave, little more than half (53-54 percent) favour a single Conservative-Reform party.”
Despite the divide, more than half (52 percent) think a merger would improve their chances of winning at the next General Election.
When asked about the threat of Reform, Tory leadership contender James Cleverly insisted the Conservative Party “doesn’t do mergers”.
Mr Farage has suggested that Reform UK could take over the Tories at some point in the future.
Before the election, he said: “If Reform do well and get a lot of votes and a reasonable representation of seats – and the Tories do very badly – then something very big is coming afterwards.”
He pointed to the example of Canadian politics in the 1990s, when a new party called Reform replaced the Progressive Conservative Party after an election defeat before the two later merged.
However, many Tories, such as former chancellor George Osborne, have argued that the Conservatives lost far more votes and seats to the Liberal Democrats in the election.
He has said the Tories should instead focus on winning back those who voted for Sir Ed Davey rather than going after Reform.
Yet elsewhere in the poll, 51 percent of Conservative members disagreed and said the next leader should shift the party to the Right to target Reform.
Just 34 percent thought it should move to the centre and only 7 percent said it should stay where it is.
The policies members supported the most were building new hospitals in the areas that need them most, banning under-18s from legally changing their gender, and building new prisons on disused industrial sites near major cities.
