February 25, 2025 - 7:00am
British Conservatives should pay close attention to what happens in Germany over the next few years. For the dilemma facing Friedrich Merz could well await whoever leads the Tories after the next election — namely, what to do about a divided Right?
A glance at the map of the German election results illustrates the problem. In the former West Germany, Merz’s centre-right CDU — and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU — secured a very strong result; in the old German Democratic Republic, on the other hand, the AfD is ascendant. That means that, nationally, Merz secured an historically unimpressive share of the vote for the CDU: its second-poorest finish since the Forties, and fewer MPs than Angela Merkel won at any of her elections.
Now Merz is in a deeply invidious position. With the liberal FDP falling below the threshold and losing all its MPs, there is no viable majority coalition in the new Bundestag except with the shattered SPD, perhaps alongside the Greens.
Such a pact would maintain Berlin’s vaunted “firewall” against the hard-Right. But it would also risk alienating Right-wing voters whom Merz has worked hard to win back to the Christian Democrats after Merkel — and this might sound familiar to Tory supporters — used the fact she had no challenger to her Right to govern as an arch-centrist.
If Reform UK secures a significant breakthrough at the next election, Nigel Farage’s party could hurt the Conservatives in a similar fashion. While it isn’t quite as striking as AfD’s strength in the old GDR, Reform’s support is still geographically concentrated in certain places — mainly parts of the North, coastal areas, and Wales. This is very good news for any party hoping to make a breakthrough in Britain’s much less forgiving electoral system. But for the Tories, it spells trouble.
If Reform can win those areas and then dig in as the local Right-wing choice, it will shrink the Conservatives’ map, and this could hurt more than in Germany because the UK system does not reward piling up the vote in seats you win. Just like their Scottish and Welsh wipeouts in 1997, it would leave the Tories having to work harder just to stand still.
Yet the awful electoral geography of the last election doesn’t leave Kemi Badenoch, or another Tory leader, any easy options. The best way to maintain the Conservatives’ historic advantage would be preventing a Reform breakthrough, but the overwhelming majority of the seats where Nigel Farage’s party is in second place are Labour-held. On the upside, that means a Reform breakthrough need not be at the expense of the Tories’ rump caucus in Parliament; on the other, Farage’s party is well-positioned as the logical anti-Labour option in over 80 seats.
What’s more, any attempt to chase Reform risks exposing Tory MPs to other dangers. In seat terms, this is the most marginal parliament since 1945, and many are sitting on slender majorities. Across broad swathes of suburban and rural England the Liberal Democrats — and in places the Greens — pose a clear and present threat in what were once heartland seats.
Boris Johnson won the Red Wall in 2019 with a spendthrift manifesto which accelerated the alienation of parts of the Conservatives’ traditional (i.e. prosperous and Southern) base. Shoring up their support, at a time of mounting Budget pressure and rising defence spending, would preclude that sort of pitch.
And if Reform does break through? In that case, the question probably becomes simply what form of deal the parties strike — and how long the Tories need to keep losing before they make it.
She should offer to stand down Conservative candidates in any constituency where Reform are the primary challenger to Labour, in exchange for Reform standing down in an equal number of Conservative target seats. Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens already have an effective non-aggression pact on the ground to carve up many formerly Conservative seats between them, and the risk of them ramping up cooperation in response to a Conservative -Reform deal is reduced now that Labour is an unpopular governing party. If Farage turns that down, it will demonstrate that he is more interested in show than in actually winning power.
This is the only sensible choice. If Farage, Tice and Badenoch don’t take it, thereby condemning us to another five years of this car crash, they won’t be forgiven.
We have to be so much more ambitious than this, the Tory party is not a conservative party anymore, the one nation tories, with a one nation leader, and are in the ascendency.
They are more libdems than tory, we need a complete wipe out of the Tory party.
Reform is like the LibDems, a party of protest. It is not a serious alternative government. Reform in government would be like the LibDems in 2010-15 – an embarrassing failure.
Yet the serious parties have drove Britain to the brink of economic and social collapse. More beatings please.
We are _not_ on the “brink of economic and social collapse”. We have serious problems to address. Moaning from the sidelines won’t help.
Christ-please let us know what a “serious alternative Government”looks like-the current clown show masquerading as competent politicians or the previous incumbents with 14 years of economic decline and social disruption.
An alliance with a Party where it’s got regional leaders in Court for taking Russian bribes? Not a good look I would suggest.
She needs to hold her nerve. Reform will implode.
Interesting is that Labour are not attacking the Tories but only Reform. This transfers some credibility to Reform.
Agreed. It’s a ‘no-brainer’ as far as I can see. Reform and the Tory right are not a million miles away in terms of policy.
But the Tory “right” are not in a majority and the rest of the so called Conservative party are a bunch of” one nation ” (sic) Tories who make Blairs’ New Labour look positively right wing
I would have thought the most obvious lesson to take away from the German election, was the complete and utter failure of integration of the former DDR. Yet the Germans spent trillions of euros on levelling up.
Question is, why did integration fail?
I suspect multiculturalism has a particularly shocking effect on people who have grown up in a completely homogeneous society like the DDR.
The big question over the next year will be, with the One Nations Tories in the majority supported by their leader, how many right of centre Tory MP’s will remain in the Tory party?
It will only take some electoral success for Reform and the polls to plummet further and just maybe some Tory MP’s might pluck up the courage to start their own party or even join Reform.
There is a massive opportunity to cause major damage to the UniParty, let us hope those Tory MP’s take that opportunity for the sake of our economy and our values.
The last thing we want is for the Tory Party to survive, they have trashed our economy and their members, we need a ‘real’ conservative party.
It’s 4 years away. Much can change. Go back only 5 and it was all about the dawn of new 10yr Bojo Golden era.
Now given a Reform Wales leader – Nathan Gill, in court accused of taking Russian bribes, one can be certain the intervening 4 yrs will have a trail of such malfeasance emanating from that Party alongside a Policy programme that sprays promises around like confetti. It’ll come undone and Mr Conservative Home as Author would be better focusing on what policies exactly the Right has to tackle our multiple problems than constantly ruminating on the electoral calculus.
Back to Mr Gill – one can assume he’s not ended up in Court without there being considerable substance to the charge. Nor would anyone but a fool think the FBS only targeted him. Thus intuition suggests the FBS chequebook will be at much broader play. When you read some of the Putin fanboy stuff, even here on Unherd, it does make you wonder.
But the Tories aren’t a party of the Right. They will shrivel away.
She definitely needs Black Rock’s money. I still think Jenrick and Mordaunt will be in by 2034 though. That just needs Reform to collapse (a certainty in the next 10 years when those rich old men get too old) and the Lib Dem seats to go Tory again.
In fact, if Reform do manage to recruit some young MPs they could see a Tory coalition in the 2030s. They need to get the Internet Right into parliament first.
We have to be so much more ambitious than this, the Tory party is not a conservative party anymore.
The one nation tories, with a one nation leader, and are in the ascendency.
They are more libdems than tory, we need a complete wipe out of the Tory party.
The point is moot, as KB won’t be leading the Tories into the next GE. The party has a taste for blood. Suspect it’s far from sated.
Boris Johnson won the Red Wall in 2019 entirely due to his efforts to Get Brexit Done, nothing more, nothing less. Any alienation from the Tories southern base would be due to a Remainer bias in the south of England.
For Kemi Badenoch, there’s only one issue that will help her revive the Tories, and that’s immigration. She’d have to out-Reform Farage on the issue, and somehow overcome the ‘trust’ deficit built up over the past 14 years to succeed. The clock is ticking.
Any chance that the wishes and long term interests of the country and its people might be considered among these piddling little machinations about party issues? If the overwhelming majority of the country wants less, more intelligent and productive, immigration, and speedier and more efficient deportation of foreign terrorists and criminals, as it does, then forget your bl000dy parties, drop the whips, and arrange it. This wrangling over party interests is one of the biggest defects of our tired democracy and its institutions. It’s the 21st century, not 1832.