What next for the Conservative Party and is a merger with Reform UK likely?

Interview with politics expert Dr Steve McCabe

Transcript

00:00It's better than it could have been, so of course that smaller party have to sort of

00:04to regroup. Are they going to go sort of to the centre? Of course that's sort of

00:07pretty occupied by sort of Starmap, which of course is now sort of centre-left

00:10government, you know, maybe they could be a centre-right, or do they go ever more

00:14rightwards? And I think the sort of the difficulty they've got, they're not quite

00:17sure what to do, because of course, you know, they've got to sort of do

00:20something. They're not under pressure, but of course they have to try and be as much

00:24as they possibly can be an effective opposition, and also being aware that in

00:28sort of another five years time, there will be another election, and they've

00:31got to be sort of fighting fit for that. The Conservative Party is a

00:34crossroads, and they've got to decide which way they're going to go. I suspect

00:38it may be a case that sort of they're a bit like the sort of the Conservatives

00:41in 1997, they may have to go through a number of leaders till they sort of get

00:45to a Cameron, and whatever sort of chrisms you may sort of point at him.

00:51Of course he sort of did make the Conservatives once again electable, but

00:54then of course we had Brexit, and of course then they sort of became

00:57unelectable, but hey, you know, that's the sort of the febrile nature of sort of

01:00politics at the moment. There could be a number of Conservatives who sort of

01:03don't believe that they're sort of going in the right direction, and they sort of

01:06split off, if you like, they defect to reform, and indeed that becomes a

01:11sort of a new unified party, and it leaves the sort of the Conservatives to

01:14sort of become once again the one nation party they used to be. Farage, as it is,

01:19is the sort of the professional disruptor, and indeed there's no sort of

01:22reason to suspect he's not going to continue to disrupt, because so far

01:26that has served him well. The difficulties next time, he may be sort of

01:29putting sort of forward policies as being the next government, and that

01:32becomes a sort of a different matter altogether, and we've seen in sort of

01:35France that sort of right-wing parties can be popular, but they're not

01:38necessarily sort of the biggest party in Parliament. When we'll have had another

01:42election, or the next election, Labour are not going to be sort of having, will not

01:46enjoy such a big majority, and indeed we could be back to sort of to, you know,

01:50Labour losing the sort of the power, or indeed sort of some sort of a sort of

01:54hung Parliament. Yeah, nothing can be predicted, you know, politics is nothing

01:57if not sort of volatile at the moment.