Leadership hopeful says too many people rely on government and not just civil servants or ‘equality, diversity and inclusion instructors’

Popular Conservatism, or PopCon, has released the results of a survey of party members suggesting more than half of them favour a merger with Reform UK. Some 30% of the respondents said they tended to support the idea, and 23% were strongly in favour. The survey covered 470 members.

Annunziata Rees-Mogg, PopCon’s head of communications and a former Brexit party MEP, said:

Every Conservative activist and canvasser knows people who had been Tories, but voted Reform UK in July. It is no surprise our panellists understand that the next leader of the party needs to take action to bring many like-minded voters back to the Tories. Almost three-quarters want a relationship with Reform in order to unite the right.

The answer I was often given by people in government at the time was that lockdowns were very popular.

They were getting 60, 70, 80% popularity ratings in the opinion polls. But you mustn’t believe those opinion polls, they’re basically nonsense.