Every time an election results in a victory for the challenger, one question is always worth asking. Did they win it, or did the other party lose it? The general election is a case a point: Keir Starmer’s massive majority on a relatively low share of the vote had at least as much to do with voters desperately wanting rid of the Conservatives as it did with any particular enthusiasm they might have had for Labour.
The same goes for Reform UK’s win in last week’s by-election in Bromley. Yes, the party came from nowhere to take 34 per cent of the vote – a share spookily similar to Labour’s nationally last year. But that was only enough to win the seat because the Conservatives’ share fell so sharply.
True, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Reform managed to snatch a seat in that south east London borough. After all, the town of Bormley was historically part of Kent, where earlier this year Nigel Farage’s latest vehicle swept to victory in county council elections. Nor should we forget that the Conservatives only squeaked home in Westminster seat of Bromley & Biggin Hill last July, again because their support fell precipitously.
But any London Conservatives hoping the challenge from Reform will be confined to boroughs bordering Kent, or where they only held London constituencies by narrow of margins, may be fooling themselves. Their party’s electoral and reputational problems go much deeper – and a lot higher – than that.
Fourteen years of failure in national office mean the Conservatives are utterly despised by large parts of the electorate. Worse than that, they are now considered an irrelevance. In a polity where a party’s standing in the opinion polls now seems to count for more than how many MPs it has at Westminster, Reform UK is seen by many as “the real opposition” to a Labour government that’s rapidly become as unpopular as its Tory predecessor.
Added to that, just look at the way that the media hangs on Farage’s every word, while Kemi Badenoch struggles to get headlines – even if, ironically, that same lack of coverage might be said to have proved something of a blessing for Badenoch when it came to Bromley.
It meant, for instance, that her decision to go canvassing in an ultimately doomed attempt to hold onto what, in the end, was only one seat in an obscure borough council by-election didn’t get as much attention as it might have. The fact that the Tories and their leader threw the proverbial kitchen sink at the contest and still lost to Reform should arguably have produced far more comment and analysis than it did.
The same goes for the fact that all this has occurred in spite of the Conservatives spending most of their time since Badenoch’s elevation to the leadership turning themselves into an imitation of Reform – albeit far too pale an imitation, according to supporters of the man she defeated, Robert Jenrick.
Centre-right parties all over Europe have likewise attempted to fend off the challenges they face from populist radical Right rivals in the same mould as Farage’s outfit by moving, at least rhetorically, in those challengers’ direction. Very often, however, they find that right-wing voters prefer the original to the copy, while those more middle-of-the-road supporters their rightward shift has alienated have no intention of returning anytime soon.
Famous last words but, on the strength of the swing to Reform in Bromley Common & Holwood ward, next year’s borough contests in London probably won’t prove a total wipeout for the Conservatives. Even so, those contests are unlikely to provide them with much good news. How much that will be due to Reform UK and how much to the Tories themselves will, as ever, be a question well worth asking – and one to which Badenoch may struggle to come up with a convincing answer.
Will she even be around to do that? Who knows? Which means Conservatives in the capital should focus on making their own luck if they want to hold on in the boroughs next year – let alone stand any chance at all of recapturing the London mayoralty in 2028.
For one thing, they should stop obsessing not just about Nigel but also about Sadiq: this is almost certainly his last term, so they’ll be fighting another Labour politician before they know it, ideally with a Tory candidate with some star power and media credibility who’s allowed to depart from the party line now and then.
For another, while it’s reasonable to accentuate some of the problems the London faces, Tories there shouldn’t be so negative as to imply that they don’t actually like the super-diverse, teeming, largely pro-European metropolis they hope to represent. Leave the London-bashing to Reform – after all, that party’s evident distaste for everything the capital represents is why, in the end, the overwhelming majority of its voters are unlikely to fall for Farage’s schtick any time soon.
Tim Bale is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London and author of The Conservative Party after Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation, now available in paperback. Follow him on Bluesky.
