Lord David Frost has warned the Conservative Party could “easily disappear” as voters shift towards Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The Conservative peer and former Cabinet minister said that the previous “psychological loyalty” to the party had been broken, with traditional Tory voters now considering their options at the ballot box.
He pointed to a failure to deliver on promises in Government such as reducing immigration and reducing taxes as reasons for voters deserting the party.
In July the Tories won just 121 seats in the House of Commons, with les than a 25 per cent share of the vote.
Lord frost said that too many Tory voters felt disillusioned with the partyPAMeanwhile, Reform UK, standing in their first Parliamentary elections won 14.3 per cent of the vote with five MPs elected.
Speaking at an event on the fringes of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Frost said: “The reason I worry is that it seems to me that for the first time for a very, very long time the party in the country is beginning to break down and some of the instinctual loyalties are beginning to break down.
“A lot of members clearly went to Reform or just sort of gave up being involved in the party.
“That’s very obvious when you get around the country, the frustration that much the party has with central office is another symptom of this.
Lord Frost said many Conservative voters sympathised with the Reform program
“I think some of the psychological loyalty has been broken.
“So many did vote for Reform, so many Conservative voters sympathised with the Reform program and wished like would have been a bit more like that.
“So I do think the membership is very small, it’s beginning to break up in the country, we’ve got this big force to our Right and those are the things that if we create conditions for more of that to happen, the party could could easily just disappear.
“It doesn’t have a right to exist, it’s got to stand for something, and we’ve come very close, to not really standing for anything.”
Nigel Farage set out his mission to replace the Tory Party following the General Election
PA
Farage said after the July General Election that he wanted to replace the Tory Party and become the real party of Opposition for disillusioned voters.
He vowed to “change politics forever” and turn Reform UK into a “mass movement across the country”.
Warning of the need for the Conservatives to win back Reform supporters, Frost said: “We can’t possibly win the next election if the Right is divided, that’s just a given. It’s simply not gonna happen.
“Therefore, the question is, how do we make sure that situation doesn’t happen.
“Now, in an ideal world I would say we become a strong Conservative party again. And we begin to win voters and supporters back from Reform.”