A Conservative and Reform coalition is the clearest roadmap to an electoral victory for Toryism, says Jacob Rees-Mogg

My suggestion of a Tory Reform electoral pact is picking up a little bit of steam.

But it didn't take long, rather bizarrely, for the Liberal Democrats to call for my suspension from the Conservative Party - why calling for a strategy to help my party win the next election would constitute grounds for suspension isn't entirely clear.

Probably the Lib Dems are frit, to use Lady Thatcher's word, of so powerful an electoral force.

But without indulging in the electoral woes of the Lib Dems any further, I would like to reassert my suggestion that this plan is the clearest roadmap to an electoral victory for Toryism.

Jacob Rees-Mogg

The Reform UK electoral contract is fundamentally Conservative. It appeals to conservative voters and members, and there is an overlap which suggests we ought to be working together.

Top of Reform's priorities, cutting Government waste, slashing net migration, stopping the boats and boosting the economy.

These are all policies that belong in the Conservative Party. If the parties remain separate, this could hand a victory to Labour on a plate.

And although there are some matters between Reform and the Conservatives on which we disagree, not many actually all political parties are coalitions.

And there's far more on which we do agree, including, I would hope, a desire to keep the socialists out of power, a Labour government will do the opposite of what the electorate wants.

Its popularity in the polls is a sign of a desire for change, not support for its policies. Labour would not stop the boats. Its plan is a non-plan that was recently revealed to be a copy of what the government's already doing.

It would not cut mass migration. Indeed, mass migration derives from New Labour's ideology. Labour would surrender sovereignty to the Office of Budget Responsibility.

We could practically say goodbye to the prospect of tax cuts or meaningfully endeavouring to grow the economy. It would double down on the lunacy of net zero, spending an extra £100billion on decarbonising the grid by 2030 just to make us cold and poor. It would have even more wokery as its pledge to expand the Equality Act with a new Race Equality Act.

All of the problems we see in modern Britain, mass migration, small boats, public sector workers, ESG, economic stagnation, statism, the list goes on, would be increased by socialism. And this needs to be stopped.

So the answer is for the Conservatives and Reform to reunite the Tory family.

Politicians need to have dreams for a greater, better, more successful country. One of the things that's so dispiriting about modern politics is the lack of a dream of vision, a foresight for where our nation should go. And I want that to be a conservative vision, not a managerial vision as ever.