RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: If the Tories are wiped out, it won't be Farage's fault - they'll only have themselves to blame

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Let's get one thing straight from the off. If, or rather when, Keir Starmer walks into 10 Downing Street on July 5, it won't be the fault of Nigel Farage or Reform UK.

The impending Labour landslide is a direct result of 14 years of Tory arrogance, incompetence, complacency and contempt for the millions of voters who put them into power with what should have been an impregnable majority in 2019.

Let's also get something else crystal. That 80-seat margin wasn't just a Conservative triumph. It was a joint Conservative/Brexit Party victory, after Farage's magnanimous gesture in standing down his troops, especially in the so-called Red Wall.

Yes, Boris deserves the lion's share of the credit, along with the alarming prospect of Oh, Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister. But if Farage had fielded a full complement of candidates and split the Right-wing vote in otherwise winnable seats it could have been a whole different ball game.

Don't forget that Corbyn ran the Tories close in 2017, following the implosion of Mother Theresa's hubristic 'strong and stable' shambles of a campaign.

The impending Labour landslide is a direct result of 14 years of Tory arrogance, incompetence and complacency, not the fault of Nigel Farage or Reform UK, writes Richard Littlejohn 

Without the wholesale withdrawal of the Brexit Party from the fray, Boris may have had to settle for a much more fragile majority. Which, come to think of it, wouldn't have been altogether a bad thing. It might have made disloyal backbenchers and pipsqueak ministers consumed by personal ambition think twice before embarking on an orgy of self-immolation from which the party may well never recover.

If this election does turn out to be an extinction-level event, the Tories will only have themselves to blame.

Why the hell should Farage bail them out for a second time? In 2019, cast-iron policy assurances were given, then dumped by the Conservatives at the earliest possible opportunity. OK, Brexit got 'done', after a fashion and without any great enthusiasm.

So imperfect was the alleged 'deal' with the EU that only yesterday we learned that soon, because of a Brussels edit, smokey bacon crisps are to be banned in Northern Ireland.

I understand completely the argument that splitting the 'conservative' vote will assure a Starmer victory. But that's going to happen anyway.

Anyway, we shouldn't assume all those likely to vote Reform are in any way 'conservative' with a capital-C. The majority live in traditional Labour Red Wall seats, and in exchange for voting Tory were promised lavish 'levelling up' and a ruthless clampdown on immigration. How's that working out, then?

You don't need me to remind you that since the Brexit referendum, inward migration has gone through the roof. So much for 'taking back control'.

Farage has every right to feel betrayed. So have the millions who put their trust in the Tories, not just in 2019 but dating right back to 2010.

An allegedly Conservative Government has delivered the highest taxes in 70 years, a huge increase in legal and illegal immigration, millions of people economically inactive, ruinous net zero madness, an explosion in wokery, militant trans lunacy, record crime rates and a strike-ridden public sector where nothing works properly and civil servants don't even turn up to the office more than three days a week.

A spiteful, class-war Starmer-led socialist government will be ten times worse, but that's down to the Tories

(I had to laugh on Wednesday when I saw Sunak reading out Monty's stirring words on the eve of D-Day, given that on his watch the strength of the British Army is now lower than at any time since the Napoleonic wars. Don't panic!)

Need I go on?

They were elected as Conservatives, they have governed as New Labour.

Of course, a spiteful, class-war Starmer-led socialist government will be ten times worse, but that's down to the Tories. Trying to shift responsibility for a Labour landslide onto Farage is as desperate as it is disgraceful.

As I've argued before, where is it written that the Conservative Party has a divine right to rule? Or that Tory MPs are entitled to hold on to their seats, simply because the Labour alternative is too horrible to contemplate? With hindsight, the best outcome of the 2019 election would have been a Conservative/Brexit coalition.

A phalanx of Farage's Merry Men might have kept the Tories honest and forced them to stick to their manifesto commitments.

No one could have foreseen Covid or Ukraine, but Farage playing Jiminy Cricket might have stopped the Tories descending into a suicidal, self-indulgent, self-destructive festival of backstabbing and chaos.

That ship has long since sailed. It's too late, baby, it's too late.

Our insular, bought-and-paid-for political commentariat are all sneering at Farage's stated intention to replace the Conservatives as the true party of the centre-Right. But then again, they all laughed at Christopher Columbus...

The polls tell a different story. According to YouGov, Reform and the Tories are now running neck-and-neck. This time next week, Rodney, Reform may well have a commanding lead.

Of course, that won't necessarily translate into more than a handful of seats, at best. In 2015, Ukip Hoovered up four million votes but ended up with just one MP. Reform may get six million votes and not a single seat, but what the heck? It's a start.

Farage should win Clacton, even though he has to overturn a popular local candidate with solid Tory majority.

Rupert Lowe is in with every chance of capturing Great Yarmouth, where he leads the Tory in the latest polls.

Richard Tice is vigorously contesting Boston, Brexit Central in the referendum, although he's by no means nailed on.

Former Tory Lee Anderson should hold his Ashfield seat and Reform candidates are making headway elsewhere.

(Funny how the Conservatives once embraced ex-miner Anderson as the authentic future of the party and made him deputy chairman. Since he defected, he's been dismissed as just another thick, working-class gammon — evidence of the ingrained, entitled snobbery which characterises a certain type of traditional Tory.)

After Anderson quit in March, I wrote that it was time other Red Wall Tories jumped ship and hooked up with the Faragistas. It would be their best chance of hanging on to their seats. Now, the moment has passed. Until the next time.

Backing Reform is no more futile than voting for the Lib Dems, led by that ridiculous circus act Ed Davey, who helped bring you Mr Bates v the Post Office when he was a Coalition Government minister under Call Me Dave and 'I Agree With' Nick.

A realignment of the centre-Right is long overdue. Most of the Tories likely to survive the July 4 massacre are dripping wet Remainers who would be happier in the Lib Dems.

The Tories don't deserve to win this election. They've blown it, forfeited any right to govern, writes Richard Littlejohn

They are all busy shoring up their safe Southern seats and to hell with the rest of the country. A couple have already deserted to Labour, which tells you all you need to know about their commitment to proper conservatism in any shape or form.

For those of us who believe in a sovereign, low-tax, low net immigration Britain, July 4 is going to be bloody.

But the Tories don't deserve to win this election. They've blown it, forfeited any right to govern.

Sorry to sound defeatist, but the next five years are going to be brutal. Starmer may unravel fairly quickly and we could end up with a palace revolution which installs an even more extreme Left-wing government under Labour's resident fishwife Ange Rayner.

A vote for Reform would be a statement of intent. Farage could have kept sniping from the sidelines, carried on presenting his show on GB News and joined Donald Trump's Flying Circus in the U.S., where he could earn a small fortune on the lucrative lecture circuit.

Instead, he's treading the boards on Clacton pier, trying to lead a fightback.

It's not going to be easy, but at least he's giving it a go. Don't blame Nigel when Starmer saunters into No 10. Nope, that's entirely the fault of the Useless Conservatives.

As the headline on this column read back in January: 'Maybe the Tories should stand down in favour in Reform UK.'