Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch are battling to win over voters on the right (Image: Express)
Red wallers are being closely watched to see if they will be the next defectors, but it is centrist who are now becoming Reform-curious.
For decades ’s supporters were mainly older voters from small towns or rural areas.
In the last year he has become a hit with the Gen Z Tik Tok generation.
So, it was a bit of a surprise when a metropolitan millennial Tory who has been at the heart of Westminster life for more than a decade admitted to me they were politically flirting with the insurgents.
Around the same time Thomas Kerr, a Scottish Tory council group leader, defected saying the party “lacked a positive vision of centre-right conservatism”.
It should be ringing alarm bells in Conservative HQ.
My pal told me he was fed-up of Labour being able to get away with its miserable mantra that “14 years of Tory rule” is to blame for everything.
Over that period, they were re-elected three times, he pointed out, so voters cannot have thought they were all bad.
On the first re-election, the party went from coalition to a majority. It lost that under Theresa May but was still way ahead of its challengers.
Boris, of course, won them a stonking victory. So, it is only in the last few years that the public lost its rag with the government.
But the problems mainly stemmed from , an episode that would have left any government reeling.
The should stop apologising and start fighting, highlighting their achievements in the way Blair did relentlessly, he said.
A few days later, Kemi Badenoch apologised for the actions of the Conservative government she had been part of.
During a phone-in on LBC that evening, the Conservative leader then linked the pensions with means-testing, risking the support of the one group of voters that have remained most loyal to the party.
Everybody got the wrong end of the stick, apparently, and she does not want to review the system that guarantees a decent annual increase in the state payments.
It was an easy open goal for the other parties and has put real doubt in voters’ minds about the future of the under the .
The Express will always fight to defend the , regardless of the political stripe of the party that threatens its future.
We know how important it has been in preventing the miserly 75p a week increase under Labour that it was introduced to prevent, particularly now and Rachel Reeves have stripped pensioners of their winter fuel payments.
But there was also something else fascinating about the Conservative leader’s outing last week.
Badenoch insisted she was focused on doing the right thing rather than the popular thing.
But they should not be exclusive and a good dose of hope and optimism never goes amiss.
While Badenoch is unruffled by whether she and her party are popular, Farage is out on the airwaves, in print or on social media being just that.
You can have all the cleverest solutions to all of the country’s problems but it is all pointless if the popular guy wins and you lose.
Politicians have to be good at politics, which means working out what are the public’s priorities, what voters will tolerate for the good of the country and what they won’t.
Ex-MPs and former aides who still want to be politically active are now engaged in a game of chicken.
Do they stick with their party through thick and thin, endure the misery and hope things will get better?
Or do they take a leap of faith and defect while the rewards are still high but it could all go wrong?
Tory chairman Nigel Huddleston urged supporters to show “patience” while the party decides what it stands for.
It is a massive gamble, the tortoise and the hare.
While Farage is filling the vacuum, building momentum and increasing Reform’s poll ratings, the are going back to “first principles” and working out what they stand for.
But while that work is going on, newspapers, television shows and radio programmes have to be filled.
Politicos will be tweeting away, voters will be scrolling through Facebook, and others.
Reform could reach a natural ceiling in their support. For everyone who thinks Farage is great, there is another person who would never vote for him.
That has long given the comfort. But if the party’s previously committed centrists are even starting to tentatively wonder about Reform, time is not a luxury Kemi Badenoch has.