Could the next election be decided by Conservatives who’d rather have Keir Starmer as Prime Minister than Nigel Farage? John Rentoul of The Independent thinks they might — and he’s not alone.

For instance, Gavin Barwell, the former minister and Downing Street chief of staff, has confirmed that he’s a Starmer Tory. Furthermore, YouGov polling earlier this year found that one in four Tory voters would also choose Starmer over Farage.

For Kemi Badenoch, the question of who the Conservatives might work with in the event of a hung parliament isn’t going away. Indeed, comments from the party chairman, Kevin Hollinrake and the deputy chairman, Matt Vickers, are drawing attention to the possibility of a deal with Reform. So before it turns into a divisive issue for her party, she needs a properly thought-out strategy.

The first thing to realize is that the focus of the growing debate over possible coalitions will be on the Tories. That’s because they’re the only major party that might conceivably work with either Labour and the Lib Dems on the one hand or with Reform on the other. It’s also because the party is becoming relevant again. As I argued last week, the Badenoch bounce is a small one so far, but it still matters because it only takes a few percentage points to save the Tories from minor-party status. The latest UK poll from Verian — the most accurate pollster at the last general election — puts the Conservatives in a clear second place. That’s not enough to make Badenoch PM, but it could give her the power to choose who does get the job.

The Barwell argument for an anti-Farage stance is that this would allow the Conservatives to harvest tactical votes from Labour and Liberal Democrat voters desperate to stop Reform.
However, in red/blue marginals, the Conservative Party is also in a position to attract tactical support from Reform voters — who now hate Labour more than the Tories by an overwhelming margin. As for the argument that 25% of Conservative voters would prefer Starmer to Farage as Prime Minister, the same research shows that 43% see it the other way. What’s more, those percentages relate only to current Conservative voters.
Tory revival also depends on winning back the voters they lost between 2019 and 2024 — mostly to Reform and abstentions.

But what if Kemi Badenoch could have it both ways — attracting votes from the Right and from the center? To pull off a trick like that, she’d have to avoid making a premature choice between Farage and Starmer (or whoever replaces Starmer). However, she can’t just refuse to answer the question when it inevitably comes. Ed Miliband tried that approach during the 2015 general election campaign and it backfired. When asked about working with other Left-wing parties in government he tried to stonewall, but that just attracted further media scrutiny and fed into the “coalition of chaos” narrative.

For starters, Badenoch should be open about the possibility of a hung parliament. Then she should be ready to set out her red lines for Conservative participation in coalition negotiations — whether with Labour or Reform. These could include a refusal to work with parties that deny basic economic reality, like Zack Polanski’s Greens, or with parties that want to break up the UK, like the SNP. That would have the effect of putting Labour and the Lib Dems under pressure to make their own commitments on keeping the wreckers out of office.

Add to that an insistence on Britain’s continuing commitment to Nato and the proper vetting of all government appointments and the Conservatives could also present themselves as a guarantee against the worst instincts of the populist Right.

Above all, being ready with a quiver of tough but reasonable red lines would give Kemi Badenoch the initiative. While other parties — especially Labour — are still denying the new normal of British politics, she can set its agenda.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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