Kemi Badenoch is considering tearing up the power-sharing arrangements struck between Conservatives and Reform UK in town halls across England, after an undercover documentary laid bare the culture inside Nigel Farage's party.
The Tory leader has ordered a formal review of the pacts, her party confirmed on Sunday, days after the broadcast of ITV's "Undercover: A Year in Reform", filmed over twelve months by a reporter working inside the party's campaign machine.
Twelve months with a hidden camera
The film's most damaging passage features Jason Powell, an aspiring Reform MP, telling the undercover reporter that "you cannot be Muslim and British" and appearing to make light of concentration camps. Mr Powell was suspended by Reform within hours of the broadcast. Elsewhere, activists are shown boasting about their influence at a gathering they dub "Farage Fest", and describing tactics they would never repeat in front of a camera they knew about.
Reform has said the film captured a handful of individuals who have since been removed, and accused ITV of a politically motivated sting. But the footage has landed at a delicate moment, with dozens of councils now run under arrangements between Reform and Conservative groups following May's local elections, in which Mr Farage's party surged across England and Wales.
The Row at a Glance
- ITV's "Undercover: A Year in Reform" was filmed over twelve months inside the party.
- Aspiring Reform MP Jason Powell was suspended within hours of the broadcast.
- Kemi Badenoch has ordered a review of Tory-Reform council pacts.
- The Tory leader says Reform is "neck deep in scandal" and would rather fight an election than strike a national deal.
- Nigel Farage has said he remains open to a post-election pact with the Conservatives.
'Neck deep in scandal'
Mrs Badenoch has hardened her language sharply in recent days, describing Reform as "neck deep in scandal" and making clear she would rather fight a general election than enter any national arrangement with Mr Farage, whatever the arithmetic after the next vote. Helen Whately, her party chairman, confirmed on LBC that the local pacts would now be examined, telling listeners that arrangements made in different circumstances could not simply be waved through.
Mr Farage, for his part, has left the door ajar. Asked this weekend whether he could work with the Conservatives after the next election, he said he was open to a post-election pact, while dismissing the ITV film as a stitch-up and pointing to his party's rapid growth in membership and council seats.
Pact politics on both sides
The review leaves Conservative council leaders facing an uncomfortable fortnight. Tearing up agreements could hand control of some authorities to Reform outright; keeping them risks yoking the Tory brand to a party its own leader calls scandal-ridden.
Labour is not immune from the contagion. Andy Burnham has already banned Labour-Green pacts at local level after the Greens passed a conference motion on Zionism moved by their leader, Zack Polanski, a decision Downing Street framed as proof that coalition by cupboard deal always ends in embarrassment. With the right now tearing at itself over the same question, the Prime Minister's allies are privately delighted to watch the argument migrate across the aisle.