For the third time in recent years a party created by Nigel Farage is threatening the Tory party’s fading hopes of re-election. But this time the Tories’ very existence is at stake.

Reform UK was founded in 2018 by Farage from the ashes of Ukip – which forced David Cameron to call and lose the 2016 EU referendum – and from the Brexit party, which destroyed Theresa May after she tried to backslide on Brexit. Now the party is in third place in opinion polls and may turn the Tories’ expected defeat at this year’s election into an extinction event.

The Tories are so detested that true conservatives will vote for Reform anyway

Ironically, at a time when the rest of Europe is turning to the hard right over the immigration issue, Britain looks set to hand the left-wing Labour party its biggest ever electoral victory – and reduce the Tories to a parliamentary rump. That defeat may become a rout and spell the death of the Tories, if Reform fulfils its promise to stand in all 650 seats and siphon off the votes of disillusioned Conservatives who would otherwise reluctantly support Rishi Sunak (whose own previously safe seat may even........

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