This article is an on-site version of our Inside Politics newsletter. Subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every weekday. If you’re not a subscriber, you can still receive the newsletter free for 30 days
Good morning. Jake Berry, former Conservative party chair and the former MP for Rossendale and Darwen, has defected to Reform.
I know, I know: quite a few of you are thinking “Stephen, who the hell is Jake Berry, and why should I care?” But bear with me: some thoughts on why this actually is a significant moment in today’s note.
Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Follow Stephen on Bluesky and X, and Georgina on Bluesky. Read the previous edition of the newsletter here. Please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to insidepolitics@ft.com
This is what heartbreak feels like
What are the things that Reform has to do to replace the Conservatives as the main party of the right? The first, and most illusory currency, is to lead in the opinion polls and do well in off-year elections. The history of opposition and third parties that have done well in these contests, before vanishing in a general election, is very long indeed.
It is important though because it influences which party is seen as viable. There are many reasons why Kemi Badenoch is struggling to command much attention. But it also reflects the fact her party is consistently in third place in the opinion polls and is flirting with fourth.
But that slide in relevance isn’t happening in another important arena, the battle for donors. At least not yet. Thus far, the Conservative party is winning the donations battle. Now, of course, history is also littered with well-funded campaigns that went on to lose. Again, however, it matters as a sign of life. It also helps, because without money you can’t hire staff. Without staff, you end up looking amateurish, and if you look amateurish, you can’t get money.
The third thing to watch is whether young politicians who have good reason to expect that they have a long career ahead of them start gravitating to Reform over the Conservatives.
The Tory party has a well-established pattern of finding second homes for politicians who, having served in a marginal constituency for a while, lost in an election before popping up in a safe seat. For example, the 1992 intake included former MPs who had lost their seats in 1987, such as Piers Merchant. The 1997 intake included MPs such as Michael Fallon, who lost his Darlington seat in 1992. The 2001 intake included Andrew Mitchell who lost his Gedling seat in 1997. (Sometimes the wait is very short indeed: Norman Fowler lost his marginal seat in the election of February 1974 and then was back in a safe Tory seat in the October election of the same year.)
Now, that list of politicians is of highly variable quality. Some of them got appointed to the cabinet. One never held high office, resigned in scandal and ended up joining Ukip. My point, though, is that it shows you that Jake Berry isn’t like, say, his fellow Conservative-to-Reform defectors such as Andrea Jenkyns or Anne Marie Morris — politicians who did not have a future in the Conservative party but might have one elsewhere. Nor is he like David Jones, a former Conservative cabinet minister but one who has retired and is not going to return to frontline politics.
Crucially, he is someone who campaigned to remain in the EU but went on to disavow that choice. (One of his former colleagues last night described him to me as a “get along to get on kinda guy”.) Defections like his tell us what politicians in the middle of their careers think about the relative health of the Conservatives and Reform. And Berry is by no means alone — every day I hear from former Tory councillors or activists who have decided to make the switch.
It’s not in and of itself going to trigger a rush to the exits by Conservative parliamentarians, whether in Westminster, the Senedd, or perhaps most important, Holyrood (where most Tory members of the Scottish parliament are elected on the list system and so are highly vulnerable to the decline in the Conservative vote). But it is the kind of defection that reveals the deep unease in the Tory party about its future prospects, and is a sign of just how bad a state the Conservative party is in at the moment.
Now try this
One of the things we did after moving flat was to sort our CDs and I am currently trying to fill in important gaps in my collection. Anyway, I highly recommend this collection of Michael Nyman’s Shakespeare-inspired works, which you can listen to on Spotify here and buy the physical release here.
Yesterday we asked you if the UK should end the triple lock pension policy — 83 per cent of respondents said yes, 11 per cent said no and 6 per cent were on the fence. Thank you for voting and emailing us your thoughts.
