The prime minister has not ruled out allowing Nigel Farage to join the Conservative Party after it was suggested he could “save” the Tories.
Rishi Sunak said his party had “always been a broad church” when asked if he agreed with Stanley Johnson that it was time to let Farage join.
Boris Johnson’s father said the Conservatives should “open their arms” to the former Brexit Party leader to turn around their fortunes in the polls. Johnson said: “I think we cannot afford to have a man of that talent not in our camp at the next election.”
Asked if he agreed, Sunak said: “Our party has always been a broad church but my focus is consistently on delivering on the things that matter to people. I set out a set of priorities at the beginning of the year and we have just had over a week ago the autumn statement that delivered on those.”
Farage originally joined the Tories in 1978 when he was a schoolboy at Dulwich College, south London, but left in 1992 in protest at John Major signing up to the Maastricht treaty.
The Times revealed on Saturday how Farage’s stint in the I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! jungle was making Conservative MPs even more nervous about the next election, due some time next year.
One former minister said they thought Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, was “useless”, but said: “You can see Farage’s game plan is to come back and then the whole thing will go ‘whoosh!’ and we’re finished.”
Another said they had been telling voters on the doorstep “It’s OK, you can vote for me because we are going to lose the election, get a new leader, and then we can have some proper Conservative policies.”
It comes after George Osborne, the former chancellor, said that because of the party’s shift to the right it was “not inconceivable” that Farage could be a future Tory leader after the next election.
Speaking on his Political Currency podcast he said: “If Nigel Farage was given membership of the Conservative party … you have opened the door to ‘Farageism’ inside the Tory party, not led by his proxies but by Farage himself.”
He added: “It’s not inconceivable that if the Conservative Party lost the general election, and if Nigel Farage had rejoined as a Tory party … then he could be a potential future leader of the Conservative Party.”
Sunak, however, would not be drawn on when the next election would be, telling reporters he was “not going to get into election timing now” and adding he was “wanting to make a difference on things that matter to people”.
He said: “Nothing is going to divert me from that course, no matter how tough it gets, no matter the criticism I get, wherever the polls are, day in day out I am making a difference to people on the things that matter.
“I will do that every day until the next election, whenever that may be.”
The prime minister said the country had “turned a corner” on taxes. While he said he would “never comment on specific taxes”, he said: “We have got inflation down, as I said we would, we have grown the economy and we are now focused on controlling spending and controlling welfare so we can cut taxes. So when we can do more, we will.”
He also did not commit to the maintenance of the triple lock — the promise to increase state pensions by whichever is highest of average earnings, CPI inflation or 2.5 per cent — being included in the next Conservative manifesto, but he said: “We have also just delivered the triple lock in full for this coming year which the chancellor announced in the autumn statement.
“There was some scepticism that that might not happen but again it is just a signal of our commitment to look after our pensioners who have put a lot into our country, we owe them a lot and under this government we have consistently shown we will support them and back them.”
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, also failed to guarantee the pledge. He said: “Look, this government made the commitment on the triple lock, and it’s for this government to keep to its commitment. We will set out our position as we get to the election. There is obviously at least one more fiscal event to be had yet but we will set that out fully before we get to the election.”
