Tories must resist false choice of wooing either Reform or Lib Dem defectors, says thinktank

The Conservatives must resist the false choice of wooing voters who shifted to either Reform or the Liberal Democrats in the election, according to a leading Tory-facing thinktank, as the party faces a crunch week in deciding its post-defeat future.

Former Conservative supporters who opted for Reform or the Lib Dems on 4 July had common characteristics, including scepticism towards Keir Starmer and worries about immigration, Onward said.

Based on polling of more than 52,000 people in May and June, the thinktank’s report, Breaking Blue, said Conservative leaders should focus instead on what it called “super demographics” – the elements shared by many of those who abandoned the party.

It comes as the executive of the 1922 Committee, which represents Tory MPs, is due to meet again on Wednesday evening to try to thrash out a timetable for selecting a replacement for Rishi Sunak, who has said he will step down.

A meeting last week failed to agree this , with splits between likely candidates over how fast to act. One option would be to use the party’s annual conference at the end of September to unveil a successor. Others want to take longer, but this may require an interim leader given uncertainty over how much more time Sunak wishes to spend in the role.

Much of the early skirmishes between supporters of various candidates has centred on whether the party should tack to the right to tempt back voters who moved to Reform, or whether this might further alienate centrist Tories who opted for the Lib Dems.

However, the Onward research suggested that defectors to both parties disliked Keir Starmer – for Reform backers this was 76%, and 58% for ones who went Lib Dem – and also supported curbs to immigration, with 53% of Tory-to-Lib Dem voters backing this.

A more fertile focus would be, the report said, based on demographics that seem more relevant to those likely to be won back: generally voters who are older, working class, backed Brexit, own their homes, don’t live in cities and don’t have a degree.

But it also warned that the party must appreciate the sheer scale of the challenge, with more than a fifth of former Tories aged under 34 moving to Labour, and a quarter of those aged 45-74 going for Reform.

This was “a once-in-a-century defeat”, Sebastian Payne, the head of Onward, said, with the party experiencing a “four-way pincer movement” of support loss based around age, income, geography and views about Brexit.

“The route back to power will be difficult,” he said. “The trap in the upcoming leadership contest is to argue that the Conservatives either need to focus on Liberal Democrat or Reform UK defectors. The truth is that the party has to focus on both – and luckily these groups are more similar than many presume.”