The Top Priority

Those who voted Conservative in 2019 have a very clear message - with Reform's support on the rise.

Hello all and welcome back to Heaver News! As ever, I hope you are all well.

Thanks so much to the many new subscribers to this newsletter, including my newest paid supporters.

Cheers and welcome to Ian, Guy and Jez for becoming paid subscribers.

If you enjoy and appreciate this newsletter do consider supporting it and diving into the growing community here in the always lively comment section!

As ever it is great to read the thoughts of paid supporters in the comments. There was a range of feedback in response to my previous article including from Charles who had this to say:

“The Tory Party does not represent the majority of right-leaning voters in the UK.

“It has a majority of wet Remainer globalists who were appalled at the plebs voting for Brexit.

“The Brexit Deal negotiated by May, signed up to by Boris and tweaked by Rishi is a an utter shambles including our ability to control our borders.

“The Tories would have split if a policy of leaving the ECHR had been pushed with the majority of the wets in the party rebelling and voting it down with the Liebour party.

“We need the Tory Party to die and a new party to arise to properly represent the right.”

Stuart Mitchell/@IncMonocle

Mrs. Bucket and Lia also weighed in and agreed with what Charles had to say there. Certainly that line of thinking is a major challenge for the Tories at the next election, where Reform candidates will be challenging them all over the country.

The challenge for Reform remains translating solid poll results into breakthrough election performances. There are of course a number of by-elections fast approaching, with RW52 commenting that:

“The Tories are finished, they are neck deep in quicksand. If Reform go for their throats when the GE starts it's goodbye!

“I'm still waiting for Labour to say what they will do and I don't think they'll say a lot, I'm not impressed with what they have 'hinted' so far. A very interesting time ahead with the by-election coming up.”

I’ll be delving into what Reform’s candidates themselves are actually saying about these forthcoming by-elections later on in this newsletter (for paid subscribers only) but it will certainly be interesting to see what happens.

Another paid subscriber, Zorro, has given this analysis:

“Those centre and right seem to be suffering from apathy. On the Left they are complacent, they think they've won already.

“It's a very shy Tory who supports Sunak, so few say it out loud.”

Could it be the case that the Conservative collapse actually won’t be as bad as some suspect? The by-elections in Wellingborough and Kingswood are certainly a fair test of that. Both constituencies voted over 50% for the Conservatives back in 2019.

But are the Tories even listening anymore? A significant piece of research has given the clearest signal yet of what previous Conservative voters want to see the focus on. This is their top priority.