“For some in the party, denying the Tories victory would force them to become “true” conservatives again, perhaps under the leadership of Suella Braverman. But for others, including Habib, the goal is to permanently destroy the Conservative parliamentary party as an electoral force. “It does not deserve to survive,” he told me. “You can’t reward failure with incumbency, the party needs to be obliterated.”
Here, though, lies the question at the heart of Reform: what is its ultimate purpose? This question is neatly encapsulated in the figure of Farage himself: the founder and majority shareholder who is not planning to stand for the party at the election but is flirting with the idea of joining the Tories afterwards”