Kemi Badenoch cannot afford to even hint at deal with Nigel Farage

Kemi Badenoch is stamping on calls for her to strike a deal with Nigel Farage as she battles one of the greatest threats to the Tory party in decades.

The Conservative leader knows she must not say or do anything which strengthens Reform UK’s position as a credible party of power.

The real reason for this is that stating she could work with Mr Farage would be a green-light for millions of traditional Conservatives to vote Reform with a clear conscience. A second is that if she signals Reform is a potential partner in government then donors will funnel cash – which the Tories need – to the start-up party.

David Cameron understood the threat from Ukip and dismissed its followers in 2006 as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly”.

It is much harder now to paint Reform as trivial party.

Reform enjoys incredible momentum, boasts of more than 200,000 members and has topped a series of polls.

Mrs Badenoch will hope Reform-mania will fizzle out between now and polling day. Only seven months have passed since the election and much can go wrong in the coming years.

Tories will cheer if Reform collapses into spectacular in-fighting as bedevilled both Ukip and the Brexit Party. There will be grand schadenfreude at Conservative Central Office if Reform is hit with spectacular scandals, or if it simply fizzles out and goes the way of Social Democrat Party and other attempts to upend the two-party system.

Mrs Badenoch and her team face the immediate challenge of very difficult council elections ahead of next year’s contests in Scotland and Wales. She cannot afford to lose activists, votes or cash.

What’s more, she knows that a link-up with Reform could drive liberal-minded centrist voters into the arms of the Liberal Democrats. To become Prime Minister, Mrs Badenoch must win back “blue wall” seats in the southwest of England which turned yellow this summer.

The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will be in a desperate fight at the next election for the support of Middle Britons. The Lib Dems won 67 more seats than Reform at the last election – and 18 of their top target constituencies are held by the Conservatives.

Mrs Badenoch must not allow Sir Ed Davey’s party to peel away support by claiming the Tories are Reform-lite.

Jeremy Hunt has a majority of just 891 in Godalming and Ash with the Lib Dems in second place. The last thing he needs are pictures of the Tory leader in a bear-hug with Reform’s five MPs.

Labour will also seek to get out its own vote by fearmongering about the potential for a Tory-Reform coalition. Expect to see posters of Mrs Badenoch in Mr Farage’s jacket pocket.

Does this mean it is impossible that the Conservatives and Reform will end up working together? Not at all.

Tories across the country insist that ruin awaits if the centre-Right vote is split at the next election. If Reform is still a major force in the second half of this parliament then the pressure for a deal – formal or informal – will be intense.

There are strong fears that Labour could hold onto power with an even smaller share of the vote than the 34% it garnered in the summer if the Tories and Reform are fighting each other in the same seats.

Mr Farage stood down his candidates in Tory-held constituencies in the 2019 election and Boris Johnson won a landslide. The Conservatives conquered the Red Wall and temporarily realigned British politics.

It would require a masterpiece of diplomacy to persuade Mr Farage to agree to such a concession again.

Former Business Secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg made the case in the Express for “informal local election pacts between the Conservatives and Reform” which would “help to build up trust and show the public how much common ground there is between us”.

If the May elections are a triumph for Reform and a humiliation for the Conservatives then Tory big beasts will push for a radical change in strategy. The likes of Tory peer Craig Mackinlay – a former deputy leader of Ukip – want the two parties to work together to stop Labour’s “ongoing damage to the country we all love”.

But there is one huge obstacle to a deal. Nigel Farage and his comrades are having too much fun, signing-up too many members and raising too much cash to want to present themselves as a mere appendage to the Tories. And at present, they have no intention of putting their revolution into reverse.