“The wheels are already coming off this shambolic Tory local election campaign.”
Just hours after Kemi Badenoch launched the Conservatives’ local election campaign yesterday, in which she made lots of excuses about how the party will do badly in May, shadow minister Greg Smith suggested the Tories might need to consider a pact with Reform UK.
All the more humiliating for Badenoch, was the fact that she repeatedly ruled out making a pact with Reform in media interviews at the Buckingham campaign launch earlier that morning.
Smith, who is MP for mid-Buckinghamshire and shadow Parliamentary Under Secretary for Business and Trade, told Talk TV: “Look, I think if we want to get rid of socialism from this country, there may well be a point where the right-of-centre parties have to play nicely.
“I don’t think we’re at the point of having to negotiate a deal like that. At the moment, I very much hope we can have a Conservative victory.”
Smith said it was “too early” to say what the parties “playing nicely” would look like, but said if there looks to be “a risk of a continued Labour government” or “worst case scenario” a Labour/Lib Dem/ SNP coalition, right-of-centre parties might need to make a deal.
The Liberal Democrats called on Badenoch to sack Smith for his comments.
Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said: “On the very day that Kemi Badenoch launched her campaign in Buckinghamshire, the local Conservative MP for Mid Buckinghamshire has suggested a Conservative pact with Reform.”
Cooper added: “The wheels are already coming off this shambolic Tory local election campaign.
“Kemi Badenoch should sack Greg Smith from her front bench. Anything less would be an admission that the Conservative Party now wants a deal with Farage and Reform.”
At the campaign launch, Badenoch admitted that the local elections will be “extremely difficult” for the Tories.
She said: “And if you mapped that general election result of 2024 onto this coming May, then we don’t win the councils like we won in 2021.
“We lose almost every single one. But I think we’re going to do a bit better than that. But we know these elections will be extremely difficult.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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