Last year’s freshers’ fair was a dismal time for Newcastle University’s Conservative society, with just six new students showing any interest in joining at the start of the autumn term.
But this year’s event brought dozens of students showing up with renewed enthusiasm – after the Tory students merged with the Reform UK students, shrugging off a rebuke from Conservative party headquarters to do so.
“Interest increased tenfold. I think we Conservatives were just becoming a bit irrelevant,” said Henry Bateson, a one-time Conservative student who switched to Reform UK and is now president of Newcastle’s merged Conservative and Reform UK society.
Recent opinion polls suggest nearly half of Tory members would support a merger with Reform into a single party. While Conservative leaders have dismissed the idea, on campuses those on the right, such as Bateson, say their societies would struggle on their own.
“If we chose one party then we would lose half of our numbers and probably struggle to survive,” said Bateson. “I’ve now jumped on the Reform bandwagon. Kemi Badenoch is not cutting through at all.”
The decision to merge provoked a phone call from the party hierarchy, unhappy at the approach. But the combined Newcastle group continues to attract Conservative MPs and luminaries to its “pint and policy” debates.
Bateson said the merger was necessary to maintain a place for students on the political right, and warned: “I think it’s only a matter of time before Conservative societies go extinct at British universities – and we may hasten the Tories’ demise unapologetically, because they have let us down.”
The latest polling shows Reform overtaking the Conservatives among younger voters. YouGov’s most recent poll has Reform supported by 10% of those aged 18 to 24, with the Conservatives on 7% – both well behind Labour and the Greens.
At the University of York, the Conservative society lost about half its members after many left to form a Reform society, in what the group’s former secretary, Jacob Boneham, described as a “nasty split”.
“I know friends from the York Conservatives who identify as working class, voted for Boris Johnson and were big fans of his. Now they’ve gone over to Reform,” said Boneham.
Durham University’s Reform society was started last year by Xavier Hale, a philosophy student and former Conservative who has since helped other students looking to launch their own branches, including at Exeter, Kent and Oxford.
Hale said: “Durham was the first Reform society on the scene, so we set the standard. We were the first to get ratified, the first to start holding fully developed events, the first to actually get a functional relationship with our local branch.”
In its early days, the society struggled to attract 30 members, but Hale says the numbers attending events this year has doubled and Reform has been included in cross-party events such as a bar crawl involving the Conservative and Lib Dem students.
“There was more of a taboo last year than there is this year,” Hale said.
Jack Eccles, who launched Lancaster University’s Reform society in January, is another former Conservative supporter who says he “switched straight away” to Reform when Nigel Farage returned as leader.
“Farage represents more British values. He just resonates with working-class people a lot better,” Eccles said. “It’s just a ticking timebomb for the Conservatives; young Tories are getting fed up. I think all the younger people on the right are switching to Reform.”
Connor Winter, the chair of Lancaster’s Conservative society, said: “Last year we took a hit because the Reform society had a buzz, everyone was talking about it … There are plenty of Conservative societies that have taken a hit.”
Reform’s appearance on campus has not gone unnoticed by other parties. At Lancaster, more than 750 students signed a petition asking the student union to refuse affiliation. At Edinburgh, political societies including Labour and the Greens have agreed to exclude Reform from cross-party events such as debates.
But with Reform prepared to rapidly promote its youngest members, including an 18-year-old as leader of Warwickshire council, its student members see their campus societies becoming a pipeline for future candidates.
Eccles, who has accepted a position within the national party, said: “We need to have successful societies at university campuses all across the country because it allows us to prepare future council candidates, future local councillors, maybe even future MPs,” and adding: “I genuinely think it’s a movement that could go on for 100 years.”
