Why is the Conservative Party ignoring the elephant in the room?

It’s like that old saying: if you think you’re too small to make a difference, remember the last time you shared a bedroom with a mosquito, writes Marie Le Conte

It seems worth wondering why so much time is being spent discussing the mosquito in the room and so little acknowledging the elephant (PA Wire)

It started in Birmingham, at the Conservative Party’s annual conference. “Should we worry about Nigel Farage coming back?” people asked on panels. “What would happen if a new populist party came out of nowhere?”

Research had been commissioned, and polls had been done; hands were being wrung, and politicians and pundits alike kept bringing up the topic. This was just under three months ago.

Since then, it is true that Richard Tice’s Reform Party has had a modest resurgence in the polls. It is also true that, should those numbers hold, they may make life a tad more difficult for certain Tories in certain constituencies. As in previous elections, Reform wouldn’t gain any seats, but could prevent Conservative MPs from retaining theirs.