Conservative leadership hopeful says many who voted for Farage’s party were ‘lifelong Tory voters’

In his interview with the BBC, John Major, the former Conservative PM, says that it would be a mistake for his party to chase Reform UK voters and move to the right as it works out how to respond to its election defeat. (See 9.26am.) But Kemi Badenoch, the leadership candidate most popular with party members according to most surveys, is saying exactly the opposite. In an interview with GB News she said that Reform UK supporters were “our people”.

She explained:

I think one of the mistakes we made was making Reform voters think that they were not our people. They are our people. Many of the people who voted Reform were lifelong Tory voters.

One of the moments that really created that impression was when we removed the whip from Lee Anderson. I think that was a mistake.

I don’t think he’s a Conservative, and he’s spent most of his time in the last few years telling people how much he dislikes the Conservative Party and would like to destroy it. I don’t think that’s a terribly good background for bringing someone into the party.

I think that he is a disruptor. But he has said that he wants to destroy the Conservative party, so I think that’s probably a no.

Major strongly condemned the Rwanda deportation plan proposed by the last government (and defended by all four candidates still in the Tory leadership contest). He said:

I thought it was un-Conservative, un-British, if one dare say in a secular society, un-Christian, and unconscionable and I thought that this is really not the way to treat people.

We used to transport people, nearly three hundred years ago, from our country. Felons, who at least have had a trial, and been found guilty of something, albeit that the trial might have been cursory. I don’t think transportation, for that is what it is, is a policy suitable for the 21st century.

Major implied the last government deserved to lose the election. He said he did not give many interviews before the election because “there’s not been a great deal I could say, I would wish to say, in favour of what the previous government were doing.” And, talking about the election result, he said:

There’s a time of when democracy needs a change in government. I could see that in 1997, we had been in government for 18 years and it was perfectly true to say, that we were tired and that we were running out of fresh people to make ministers and reinject the government with vigour. And of course the same thing applies [with the recent election results], although it was only 14 years.

He said it would be a mistake for the party to shift further to the right. He said:

The only party that can legitimately appeal to the centre right is the Conservative party. And that is what we have to do, we have to decide where our natural support really lies and appeal to them. People may have made a misjudgement about the last election. We lost five votes to Reform UK and people are jumping up and down, and some, rather reckless people are saying, well we must merge with them.

Well, that will be fatal. We lost 50 to the Liberals, and we lost a huge amount to Labour. We lost the vote on the left, more than on the right. And we have to focus on that centre right position, and we’re not an ideological party, I do think traditionally we have been a commonsense party.