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The Conservatives have set up a new unit in a bid to sharpen their doorstep strategy.
Tory chairman Kevin Hollinrake is running the campaigning unit out of the party’s Westminster headquarters on Matthew Parker Street, PoliticsHome understands.
A source familiar with the work said it will ensure MPs and activists are equipped with talking points adapted to different parts of the electoral map, with the Conservatives facing the threat of Reform UK to their right and the Liberal Democrats to their left.
The unit’s parliamentary lead is Andrew Snowden, the Conservative MP for Fylde in the northwest of England, PoliticsHome understands.
He holds the last remaining Tory constituency in Lancashire following the 2024 general election and defeated the Labour challenger by just 561 votes despite Reform UK eating into the Conservative vote.
Parts of the northwest are seen as sources of optimism in a largely bleak electoral landscape facing Kemi Badenoch’s party.
Earlier this month, the Conservatives in Trafford bucked dire national polling trends to retake a council seat. A party source said the win showed that “good, well-liked” local candidates can help combat the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform.
The new unit will avoid direct attacks on Farage and his party, however, as there is a belief among Conservatives that doing so risks alienating voters who are sympathetic to the Reform leader’s message.
This approach is in contrast with Labour, which in recent weeks has stepped up its direct attacks on Farage and other Reform MPs significantly.
A Reform spokesperson said: “The Conservative Party is finished. No amount of campaign units can save them from their disastrous record in office. They can never be trusted ever again.”
A YouGov poll published on Tuesday put the Tories ten per cent behind Reform, and two per cent ahead of the Lib Dems.
The new unit is also expected to focus on parts of the country where the Lib Dems pose an electoral threat.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey recently invited “one nation”, moderate Conservatives to join his party, warning that Badenoch is being dragged further to the right by Farage.
A Tory source said the party is alive to the Lib Dem threat and learning from “Labour’s mistakes”, referring to how Keir Starmer’s attempts to win over Reform supporters are seen as having driven voters on the left to alternatives like Zack Polanski’s Green Party.
The Lib Dems won 60 seats from the Conservatives at the last general election, and in May the party took dozens of seats from the Tories to take control of councils in Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire.
In September, The House revealed that the Lib Dem “jam and Jerusalem” strategy was targeting patriotic voters who stayed loyal to the Tories at the last general election but are now open to a new political home and are put off by Reform.
“It’s really the group of voters that stuck with the Tories last year that we think are still there for the taking,” a Lib Dem source said at the time.