Reform UK attracts Braverman and Britain’s wrong Tories

There is a place in politics for a brave character to stand up and declare in a firm voice that Britain isn’t broken. They could look into the cameras with a steely glare and tell people modestly that quite a lot about this country is more or less fine. They would have to point out that we can’t just keep promising to spend money we don’t have and that no government can solve every problem. But they could add that, despite that, people all over the country seem to rub along rather well, that our lives are safer than they would be almost anywhere else on Earth and that we are better placed than most nations to adapt to an AI-led future. Our schools are now among the world’s best. Our businesses still innovate.

It’s not the sort of speech you would ever hear at the now-weekly press conferences which follow the defection of a failed ex-minister to Reform. Today it was the turn of Suella Braverman to mouth strident platitudes about honesty, immigration and the route to a better Britain. She may even believe this stuff. But with each novelty act, the impact is lessened. If voters didn’t like the Tories, it’s at least no better than even odds that they will warm instead to a party of ex-Tories who want to have another go at running the nation, only this time even more stridently dressed in union flags.

There are now more members of Liz Truss’s cabinet in Reform than on the Conservative opposition front bench. Reform must think this is a good thing for its electoral prospects and bad for the old dominant party of the centre-right. It’s undeniably a sign that Nigel Farage’s party look like winners to careerists whose careers have run into the sands. For them, joining is a one-way bet: if Farage gets into power, so might they.

But is it the disaster it seems for the Conservatives? Yes, if your idea of good government is giving Braverman a chance to run the Home Office for more than a month. But not if you would like to see a party — any party — speak for that very large part of the country which sits in that mysterious but real place called the centre ground. It’s a world that is realistic about economics, concerned about the environment, caring but not indulgent, patriotic but not crudely boastful about British greatness, and doubtful when it hears bloated language and big promises from politicians of any sort. These are not uniquely Conservative characteristics, of course, but they are ones that characterised a large part of the Conservative Party when it used to win elections.

Each time someone who does not share these values jumps ship to Reform, the case for renewing the Conservative pitch for this central territory grows stronger. After all, where else is there to go? If the party is not to be the party of someone like Braverman, then it must be something else — or it won’t be anything at all. There is a vanishingly small market for the just-like-Reform-but-without-Farage party, unless in the end the pair want to merge. But from the Tory leadership at the moment, we mostly hear only an echo of Reform. From climate change to immigration to defence, can you name a policy area where the pitch of the two right-wing parties differs by much?

That might be about to change. This evening, in London, an event is taking place which ought to matter more than Braverman’s departure. Ruth Davidson, the compelling former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, and Andy Street, the twice-elected former mayor of the West Midlands, are launching a movement aimed at the politically homeless. Its mission is to be a sort of prod from the left to goad the Tories back to their old winning path, a reminder that politics does not have to be a one-way march to the extremes.

How this will work is unclear. Unfortunately, the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, seems spooked by any suggestion that she should be giving space to the political centre, while Davidson and Street are clear that they are not launching an alternative party. A Tory Lazarus act may or may not be underway. As for Braverman, she’ll remember backing the old Brexit slogan: better off out.