Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has called on Rishi Sunak to pursue an election pact with Reform UK and offer Nigel Farage, the party’s honorary president, a government role as a Conservative minister.
The former cabinet minister urged the PM to make a “big, open and comprehensive offer to those in Reform”, including a government post to Farage and candidate selection for Richard Tice and Ben Habib, Reform’s leader and deputy leader respectively.
Tice has repeatedly ruled out doing any sort of election deal with the Conservative Party while the PM has dismissed a vote for Reform as a vote to put Labour leader Keir Starmer in No 10.
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However, Sir Jacob argued that uniting the right of British politics would put election victory “within reach”.
He told GB News: “With the help of Nigel Farage in a Conservative government, as a Conservative minister, with Boris Johnson probably returning as foreign secretary and welcoming the likes of Ben Habib and Richard Tice into our party, as well as pursuing genuinely conservative policies, winning the next election suddenly becomes within reach.”
In so doing, Rees-Mogg said the Conservatives could reunite the coalition of voters who propelled Boris Johnson to victory at the 2019 general election.
He said: “For too long we have ignored our voters because of a fundamental lack of identity. When the largest electoral mandate in British history passed in favour of Brexit in 2016, it represented so much more than just leaving the European Union.
“It represented a vote of confidence in the nation state over unelected and unaccountable supranational bureaucracies. It represented a rejection of mass migration. A rejection of the elite who for too long ignored the British national identity in favour of globalisation.
“The Conservative Party must represent these people, the very people who gave us, who lent us their support to give us an 80-seat majority in 2019.”
The Liberal Democrats have responded to Rees-Mogg’s comments by calling on the prime minister to remove the whip from the Conservative MP.
Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper MP said: “The Conservative Party is a shambolic mess. Rishi Sunak’s MPs are in open revolt and he does not have the backbone to stand up to them.
“If the PM had any bottle he would suspend the whip from Rees-Mogg and rule out Nigel Farage being allowed into the Conservative Party.
“The public is sick to the back teeth of this endless Conservative soap opera as they watch the NHS crumble, filthy sewage pumped into their waterways and their mortgages spiral.
“Rishi Sunak should put us all out of our misery and call a general election.”
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