Simon Clarke: Reform aren’t ‘proper’ or ‘real’ Conservatives – they aren’t conservative at all

Sir Simon Clarke served as Conservative Chief Secretary to the Treasury and as Secretary of State for Levelling Up.  He represented Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland from 2017-24.

It’s well known that Nigel Farage eventually falls out with everyone he works with. His very public row with Rupert Lowe MP shouldn’t therefore come as any surprise.

Lowe warned that Reform remains a “protest party led by the Messiah”, prompting a furious response from Farage, who suggested he has had his head turned by Elon Musk’s tweet that he should lead the party. Then, last Friday, Lowe was unceremoniously pushed out of the parliamentary party, amidst a flurry of conveniently timed allegations from his former colleagues.

Are you on the right of politics, and someone whose head might have been turned by Reform? If so, I hope you’ll read this article – because Reform’s infighting reminds us it’s crunch time, and that it’s important to take a long, hard look at the party who want to present themselves as “the real opposition”.

The deadly serious crisis over Ukraine has exposed once again that Farage is Jeremy Corbyn in a pinstripe suit.  As Donald Trump has thrown Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people to the wolves, including the appalling White House humiliation and stopping both the supply of weapons and intelligence sharing, Reform – normally the noisiest, brashest party in politics – has been struck dumb.

The rot goes deep in terms of Farage’s attitude to Putin and the Russian regime.

We should never forget that during last year’s general election, he was busy parroting the Kremlin’s lines about the war being provoked by the “ever-eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union”, rather than what it truly is: a shameless criminal land grab.  While Russian arms were enabling Bashar al-Assad to murder his own people in Syria in 2014, Farage named Putin as the world leader he most admired (“as an operator, but not as a human being”).

Just like Corbyn, Farage can’t hide fringe views on foreign affairs – and he’s previously shared the former’s attachment to appearing on propaganda channels like Russia Today.

Reform like to portray themselves as proper, authentic conservatives, but this attitude is the opposite of what any proper conservative should be about. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were unequivocal about the free world standing up to Russian aggression, and from Boris Johnson to Kemi Badenoch, every Conservative leader of modern times has shown what leadership looks like when it comes to championing Ukraine.

Any Conservative viewing Reform as long-lost cousins, or a better, braver alternative to the Tories, should also look at their plans for the economy, where their policy is a shambles.

When you add up all the promises Reform made at the general election, you get an eyewatering £140 billion of new spending and tax commitments, including nationalising 50 per cent of key utility companies and giving tax breaks to NHS consultants paid six figure salaries. These are the kind of proposals you’d expect Angela Rayner to cook up, not a party of the right.

The sums to pay for this were like a sixth form essay, full of glib references to finding £50 billion of savings from “wasteful spending” and a further £35 billion from changing the Bank of England’s interest payments.

This rank amateurism has continued into the new parliament: Reform’s big energy announcement last month was such a car-crash they had to u-turn on it within 24 hours. Let’s be clear: if these guys got into government behaving like this, all the anxiety in the financial markets we’ve seen under Liz Truss and Rachel Reeves wouldn’t touch the sides of the price we would all pay.

Reform don’t know what they’re doing, and in the scenario they wish for, where some three hundred plus new Reform MPs would be elected without any experience of Parliament – let alone governing – it would be absolute chaos.

It’s not just the economy where proper Conservatives should hold Reform to account. Their rhetoric on the flagship issue of illegal immigration is all about sounding serious, but the substance is the opposite.

‘Tow the boats back to France’? Great. Leaving aside that the Royal Navy simply won’t do anything which risks drowning people at sea – warships and overloaded dinghies don’t tend to mix well – what would happen when Emmanuel Macron, or a future President Le Pen, blocked access to French harbours, or towed the boats back to Kent? Why should we imagine that France (of all places!) wouldn’t do to us exactly what Reform propose to do to them?

We need actual policy here, not big talk without backup. Something which doesn’t fall apart on day two. Something which gets the incentives right and changes behaviours (which, for all its limitations, the Rwanda policy was a step towards).

For both legal and illegal immigration alike, I see genuinely tough, radical policy now coming out of the Conservative Party. Kemi has set out detailed plans to make both Indefinite Leave to Remain and then citizenship much harder to get, and her intention to enforce a hard, ultra-low, numerical cap on migration.  That’s a major shift in approach from the Conservatives, and one I welcome.

It’s good too that Badenoch has said the UK will “probably have to leave” the European Convention on Human Rights – but that we need a careful plan about how to do so.

That’s the difference between the Conservatives and Reform – the difference Lowe has rightly identified between a party of government and a party of protest.

Reform remain the latter, and that’s not surprising when you consider who they have explicitly been calling on to join up. Not just people on the right – people who might be, or once have been, Conservative voters. They want to take people from across the political spectrum, regardless of their beliefs. A recent council candidate application form of theirs asked:

“Reform UK is a broad movement, reflecting all political perspectives. To optimise the Party’s competitiveness against different oppositions in different constituencies, how would you describe your political leanings: Left, Centre, Right, Other?”

When you try to grab every vote, to appeal to every part of the political spectrum, then inevitably your principles become muddled and you haven’t a hope of developing a consistent policy platform. I want a centre-right party leading a centre-right government, not one trying to be all things to all men.

Heaven knows I’ve had my problems with the Conservative Party and the mistakes that have been made, and I understand the depth of the anger and frustration that so many Conservatives felt last year.

But I can see the signs that the Conservative Party is at last returning to what it is at its best: a party of the right, ruthlessly focused on peeling back the layers of the state, strengthening our culture, protecting our borders, extending opportunity, and growing our economy.

Certainly, with Badenoch at the helm and people like Rob Jenrick and Andrew Griffith at her side, that feels more the case than it’s been for years.  I don’t see that in Reform, however much some of their spokesmen want to steal our clothes.

I think that contrast is only going to become starker in the months and years to come. But it will require true Conservatives to stand with our Party as it rebuilds.