Why Badenoch won’t move to the centre

The Tories and Reform will continue to converge...

To anyone with even a single molecule of political nous, the most sensible course of action for the Conservative Party seems obvious.

Jenrick, Braverman, Kruger, Anderson, Dorries, Bradley, Jenkyns and Zahawi were political deadweights – liabilities the Conservatives were better off without.

And now they’re Nigel Farage’s problem.

Reform has extracted the poison from the Conservative Party. Its most extreme, unsavoury, incompetent wing has docked on a new victim. There are now more Truss-era Cabinet ministers in Reform than in the Conservatives, along with all their baggage.

It seems self-explanatory how Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, should respond. She should thank Farage for accepting her used goods, say that the Conservatives have shed the people responsible for breaking Britain, and announce that they’re ready to govern as adults unburdened by the screaming toddlers who’ve gone crying to Farage.

They should pivot to the centre-right – announcing a bunch of sensible policies that pitch the Tories as a fiscally and socially conservative alternative to Labour’s meek leadership.

But Badenoch won’t do that. And here’s why.

The first reason is in fact a question: if Badenoch wasn’t the leader of the Conservative Party, would she have defected to Reform?

I think it’s almost certain that she would’ve.

She has a close ideological affinity with Reform. Her policy platform is basically inseparable from Farage’s. They both want to turbocharge climate-wrecking fossil fuel production, deploy ICE-style deportation squads, decimate public spending, and bulldoze the regulations that make sure corporations and financiers don’t abuse the public.

Her party has adopted radical right-wing policies because – quite simply – she is a radical right-wing politician.

But there is also another major factor. Namely, money.

As I’ve written previously, I think Farage’s policies and decisions are currently heavily motivated not by how they’ll land with the public, but whether they will maximise his chances of attracting new donors.

Reform is heavily reliant on one mega-donor – Christopher Harborne – who has provided roughly two-thirds of the party’s income since 2019.

Farage urgently needs to diversify his funding streams, which is why he flew straight from Davos to Dubai this week, hoping to convince a room full of British “expats” to part with some of their tax-free cash.

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The core plank of this strategy involves bending the ear of Conservative donors and convincing them to redirect their riches from the Tories to Reform.

That’s partly why Farage has hoovered up defectors, even at the expense of his poll ratings. The calculation isn’t about voters but donors. Looking like a rebranded Conservative Party may be off-putting to some would-be voters, but it comforts Tory donors wary of cutting loose from a party they’ve bankrolled for decades.

This is the same political arithmetic facing Badenoch. Her priority is clinging, frantically, to the donors Farage is poaching.

Their actions may seem illogical and incongruous. That’s because they’re not thinking primarily about public opinion – they’re far more worried, especially at this stage of the electoral cycle, about appealing to a limited number of people with deep pockets.

And, unsurprisingly, these donors sit at the more radical end of the political spectrum. They’re filthy rich, which means they want tax breaks and weaker regulations to help multiply their wealth. They’re elitist, which means they think the working class is responsible for its own dire circumstances and shouldn’t be supported by the state. And they’ve been radicalised into believing that the country’s problems have been caused by immigration, excessive government spending, and “woke” liberals, rather than their rampant predatory capitalism.

As Stephen Bush wrote in the Financial Times this week, the Conservative offer is currently: “we’re like Reform, but tainted by having been in government”.

As long as Badenoch is preoccupied with stopping her patrons from bolting to Farage’s corner, little will change. The Conservatives will strain to imitate Reform, Farage will return the favour, and the rest of us will be left watching from the sidelines as the two parties converge on ever more grotesque policies.

Joy.

Read my plan for 2026 and help me to hold Farage and Badenoch to account this year…