Reform Party leader Richard Tice vowed to have “no deal with the Tories” as Conservative MPs accused him of helping Labour by splitting right-wing votes.
It comes after Labour hoovered up two Tory seats this week in Tamworth, which was controlled by the Conservatives for 19 years, and Mid Bedfordshire, which has been under Tory control since 1931.
Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, held more votes in both by-elections than the gaps between Labour and the Conservative Party.
In Mid Bedfordshire, Labour had 1,192 more votes than the Conservative Party while the Reform UK candidate took 1,487 votes.
In Tamworth, Labour led by 1,316 votes. Reform bagged 1,373 votes while Britain First and UKIP took a total of 1,016 votes.
Commenting after the elections, Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, said the results suggest Reform UK “could be reaching a level that the Tories can no longer ignore.”
Mr. Tice said he’s “delighted” with the results.
“We’re delighted with ensuring that we have stopped the Tories from winning either of those two byelections,” he said.
“They deserve to be punished. Tamworth is essentially a strong Brexit, red wall-style seat. That is where we are heavily targeting our focus because, of course, we used to be the Brexit party. So we’re pleased we’ve helped punish the Tories. There’s always more work to be done.”
About the prospests of a pre-election deal with the Tories, he said: “Zero. Seriously, you could offer me five million quid and a peerage and I still wouldn’t do it.”
Mr. Tice has been accused of working for Labour by Conservative MPs.
Lee Anderson, the Tory vice chairman who defected from Labour in 2018, told The Sun, “Reform UK and their leader Richard Tice are basically working for a Labour government.
“He wants to punish us but he will punish the country.”
Red-wall Tory MP Marco Longhi also told the tabloid, “Reform are very clear they want a Labour government.
“They have taken the view that it is OK for the UK to suffer the consequences of socialism just in the hope that one day they achieve proportional representation and get a parliamentary seat,” he said.
The sentiment has been shared by Scotland’s Alba Party, which wrote on X, “No deal with tories because you are working to get a labour government. Vote reform, get Labour. Disgusting.”
Mr. Tice hit back by asserting that the two major parties are the same.
“You cannot reward failure with more incumbency. Tories are socialist like Labour: high tax high regulation pro net zero = low growth. A catastrophe,” he wrote.
But Alexander Stafford, Tory MP for Rother Valley, another red-wall seat, told the Mail online he believers it’s “nonsense to suggest that Tories and Labour are the same” because “a re-elected Tory government will complete Brexit after the general election. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour would wreck it.”
However, the government’s handling of Brexit has largely been considered unsuccessful, with possible reasons including the spiralling cost-of-living and higher-than-before immigration.
According to YouGov’s tracker on how voters think the government has handled Brexit, as of Oct. 16, just over two-thirds of the survey respondents (67 percent) thought it was handled badly, and 21 percent thought it was handled well.
Broken down by party allegiance, just half of 2019 Conservative voters thought the government did a bad job while 41 percent approved the government’s homework.
Among Labour voters, only six percent thought the government has done well on Brexit with 83 percent thinking the opposite.
