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Will there be an exodus of Tory MPs to Reform UK in the footsteps of Danny Kruger, who has declared his old party as dead as the proverbial parrot? Apart from the fleetingly ill-starred Change UK in 2019, the last time there were serious defections from a mainstream political party to an insurgent newcomer was in 1981.
Back then the death sentence was read over Labour, which was in the throes of a civil war between Right and Left and had elected Michael Foot as its leader. That autumn, Tony Benn came within a whisker of becoming deputy leader in a monumental battle with Denis Healey.
The Conservative government, meanwhile, was struggling to deal with the mess left by Labour in 1979 and the medicine prescribed by the prime minister Margaret Thatcher was unpalatable even to many in her own party.
Some, whom her supporters called “wets”, even muttered about getting rid of her unless she changed tack, but she was implacable. “The Lady’s not for turning,” she told the Tory conference in October 1980.
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The economy was a basket case, unemployment was shooting up, manufacturing was closing down and there were riots in Brixton, Bristol, Toxteth and elsewhere. The national fabric had been torn. Britain was broken: sound familiar?
The convulsions affected both parties. Gallup poll findings for December 1981 had Labour and the Tories both on 23 per cent and the SDP on 50 per cent, way ahead of where Reform is today. A plague on both their houses, the nation cried.
Into the breach stepped a new party led by the so-called Gang of Four, a quartet of former Labour Cabinet ministers who promised to “break the mould” of British politics. Two of its leaders Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams fought and won by-elections to put the party on the map. Nearly 30 Labour MPs (and one Tory) defected to join them. If Nigel Farage could persuade 30 Conservatives over to his side he would be thrilled.
If all this sounds familiar it is because there are periodic spasms like this in British politics and yet the status quo seems always to reassert itself, not least because of our first-past-the-post electoral system. Will it be different this time? Plenty of people say so, but they do not know and cannot possibly tell.
The parallels are strong, save for one thing: immigration was not the issue it has become today, though it had been 10 years earlier when Enoch Powell was warning about the cultural impact of new arrivals, albeit on a far smaller scale than we are witnessing now.
Back then, the SDP felt like the obvious replacement for two tired old parties. Unlike Reform, its leaders were drawn from the very top of British politics. Many assumed they would form the next government but we all know what happened next.
Thatcher was redeemed by the way she handled Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands in April 1982 and went on to win a general election the following year with a majority of 140. By then, the SDP-Liberal Alliance as they had become, were down to 23 per cent in the polls and won just two dozen seats.
Events, in other words, can intervene and all predictions of what will happen over the next few years need to be accompanied by a healthy dose of reality. Kruger’s speech justifying his defection reminded me of those heady days more than 40 years ago when the end of the traditional two-party system was confidently being predicted by turncoat MPs largely forgotten today.
Many jumped ship because they saw the way the wind was blowing and feared losing their seats. But winds can change direction. All those telling us emphatically that the Tories are dead, Labour is finished and the future belongs to Nigel Farage need to get a grip.
For a party to leap from five seats to 326 – a majority of just one – in the space of one Parliament would be unprecedented. That is not to say it cannot happen, only that it is extremely unlikely. Moreover, to have a majority sufficiently large to get through Parliament the sort of agenda being talked about by Reform they would have to win an additional 400-plus seats and stack (or abolish) the Lords.
The greatest number of additional seats ever won in an election was 239 by Labour in 1945 – and that was after a war. Circumstances may be difficult today but they are not that bad, though the presence of the Greens, nationalist parties, Islamists, Corbynistas and the Lib Dems make electoral calculations difficult.
Labour showed last year that it is possible to win a big majority with just a third of the vote because there are so many parties contesting elections nowadays, whereas in the past it was essentially just two. But Labour were already well represented in many constituencies whereas Reform UK is having to build an electoral machine almost from scratch.
Farage understands this. He has been open about the need to construct a membership base right across the country and is recruiting thousands of disgruntled voters fed up with the main parties. In 1981, 70 per cent of those joining the SDP had never been members of a party before.
The Reform leader is also honest about the lack of experience inside the party, which is why Kruger’s arrival is important. He is tasked with devising the policies, and the wherewithal of getting them enacted.
Arguably politics are as febrile as anything we have seen since 1981. But that is a reason for circumspection, not absolute certainty. Too many people are now talking confidently about an outright Reform win in 2029 when anything can happen between now and then.
Indeed, Danny Kruger made this precise point at his news conference: they were not predicting a Reform government but preparing for the possibility that there might be one. That is a sensible approach that recognises that nothing is definite, especially when everything is in a state of flux.
“The Conservative Party is over,” Mr Kruger said, but I wouldn’t count on it. He believes Reform will supplant the Tories as happened in Canada – although there it is once again known as the Conservative Party after a “Unite the Right” merger that will eventually have to happen here.
He could have added that the “mould of British politics has been broken”, only it would not have been original. After all, we have been here before, and the future is just as uncertain now as it was then.