Fed-up Tory activists ‘are on strike and turning to Reform’

TORY activists are going ‘ on strike’, Rishi Sunak was warned last night as a survey suggested that half could vote for Reform UK.

Claire Bullivant, editor of the Conservative Post news site, said widespread disaffection with the Government was making it hard for local associations to persuade activists to campaign for the party.

A survey of 2,086 subscribers found that 37 per cent have campaigned in the past but just 9.9 per cent will at this year’s election if Mr Sunak remains in charge.

The poll also found that 90 per cent of subscribers believe the Government is ‘ not Conservative enough’.

Ms Bullivant told how she responded to a recent call for volunteers to join a campaigning day in Worcestershire but was

‘Painted the same bleak picture’

‘astonished’ to find only one other person there.

‘So many of the usual faces I see running events for my local association, stuffing envelopes, delivering leaflets, the really dedicated members that lived and breathed the party [have] laid down their tools,’ she said.

‘I reached out to various association chairmen across the country and they all painted the same bleak picture. Members and local activists, the men and women who do so much to win us local and national elections, are on strike.’

According to the survey, 50.5 per cent said they would vote for Reform if an election was held tomorrow while 16 per cent said they had now joined the eurosceptic party.

Just 34.3 per cent said they were planning to vote Tory with nearly three- quarters of this group believing the party would do better under a new leader.