Rishi Sunak warned against 'playing footsie' with Nigel Farage and Reform UK

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Rishi Sunak has been warned against "playing footsie" with Reform UK following two bruising by-election defeats. The Prime Minister has been urged by some in his party to shift further to the right to see off the threat of the Nigel Farage-linked party.

It comes after the losses to Labour in Wellingborough and Kingswood alongside signs of growing support for Reform UK, which some Tory MPs see as a challenger at the next general election.

Former Tory chairman Chris Patten said: "I was chairman of the Conservative Party when there was a Conservative Party. "And I think that one of the problems at the moment is that the Conservative Party is all over the place and there are bits of it that I don't really identify with traditional conservatism.

The assault on institutions, the refusal to accept that attacking courts, lefty lawyers, or the rule of law, is not the way a Conservative Party should behave." Lord Patten added: "I think the Conservative Party is deluding itself if it thinks it can behave like this and still go on and win an election." The Oxford University chancellor and peer warned his party against chasing would-be Reform voters in the wake of the by-election defeats.