‘Smearing’ Reform UK won’t win back voters for Tories, says Braverman

“Smearing” Reform UK and its voters is not an effective strategy for the Conservatives to win back support, Suella Braverman has warned.

The former home secretary said Nigel Farage’s party had won over “many of our traditional, life-long voters” as she called for the Tories to move to the Right.

Mrs Braverman, who ran in the summer 2022 contest to replace Boris Johnson, has been touted as a potential future Conservative leader. She was one of the most vocal critics of Rishi Sunak’s premiership after her sacking as home secretary.

Her comments came as she addressed an event hosted by the Popular Conservatism pressure group, which argues for lower taxes and a significantly smaller state.

Reform won more than four million votes at the general election last week, costing the Tories dozens of seats, and Mrs Braverman said: “To my mind, the Reform phenomenon was entirely predictable and avoidable and all our own fault.

“It’s no good denigrating Reform voters, it’s no good smearing the Reform party, it’s no good comparing Reform rallies to the rallies of Nuremberg. That’s not going to work. Criticising people for voting Reform is a fundamental error to make.”

Giles Watling, the Tory candidate in Clacton who lost to Mr Farage, said during the campaign that Reform’s public events were “reminiscent” of those staged by the Nazis at Nuremberg.

Mrs Braverman added: “The Reform party has taken many of our traditional life-long voters. They are now their voters, and we need to do everything we can to win them back”.

Turning her fire on Mr Sunak, she said: “Taxes, migration and politically correct policies in the public sector – it was hard to distinguish [between] the two parties.”

Mrs Braverman also claimed the Conservatives had been too shy about being patriotic in recent years, before concluding: “Onwards, comrades, we can win, we can overcome. We’ve got to be patient with each other, but I do believe the opportunity’s there.”

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary who lost his seat last week, referred to Reform as part of the “broader conservative family” as he urged the Right to unite.

“The facts of life are conservative, and that’s something we should always remember,” he said. “It’s why the Left moves to the centre, and we always get tempted by that when we lose elections, but that would be a mistake.

“The broader Conservative family won 11 million votes. That’s not too bad. And yes, I include Reform as the broader Conservative family. Sometimes, families have their differences, but we need to reunite that Tory family, and recognise that conservatism is more popular than the Conservative and Unionist Party.”

Sir Jacob and Mrs Braverman both said Tory members must be treated with more respect after a series of candidate selection rows and MPs ousting Boris Johnson then Liz Truss.

Criticising the “chumocracy” of the party machine, Sir Jacob said: “Democracy must never be rolled back. The idea that the MPs know better than the members… Look who they gave us, and look who the members gave us. I’d trust the members every time.”

Mrs Braverman said Mr Sunak was “installed by MPs” in October 2022, adding: “This really was a way of robbing members of their right, of their voice, of their say. It cannot be allowed to happen again. Hard-working members were totally ignored and disrespected.”

The conference was also addressed by Lord Frost, Mr Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, who warned that the Conservative Party was at a “moment of calamity”.

“We lost over half of our 2019 votes and two-thirds of our seats. And worse, we have to sit and watch while Labour use the levers of government that we failed to use,” he said.

“And I am afraid we have to accept the painful reality that for the time being nobody out there is that much interested in what we think.”

Turning to the eventual contest to succeed Mr Sunak, Lord Frost also said the Tories should have an interim leader to allow enough time for a proper leadership contest.

He warned against “immediately descending into the mud-slinging of a rushed leadership election” as he joined calls for a drawn-out campaign.