DAN HODGES: Why Kemi will have to swallow her pride and lure some of the Tory turncoats back from Farage's grasp

Last week I was speaking to a senior member of Reform who had defected from the Tories. They were despondent. 'It's over,' they said. 'We can't come back from here.'

Had they thought about returning to their old party, I asked. They laughed. 'Kemi wouldn't have me back. She hates us. She wants to make an example of us. I'm just going to have to fall on my sword.'

Kemi Badenoch does indeed hate the Reform carpetbaggers. And for good reason. They have split her party. Undermined, and almost destroyed, her leadership. And at best proven complicit in an increasingly vicious campaign of racism and abuse targeting the Conservative leader.

But politics is politics. And the hard reality is this. In the interests of her party – and her country – Badenoch is going to have to find a way to bring the Reform apostates back home.

Over the past week, a clear pattern has begun to emerge. Reform's polling numbers are in freefall. According to the national average, the Tories are now only two points behind. 

The last three surveys, from three separate pollsters, have either shown the parties running neck or neck, or the Conservatives ahead. And these were conducted before an ITV sting operation that caught a raft of Reform councillors and candidates expressing disgustingly racist or sexist views.

So the trajectory now appears locked. At some point in the next few weeks Kemi Badenoch will officially move ahead of Nigel Farage and firmly establish herself as the only viable alternative to Andy Burnham.

At which point she will have an important decision to make. In her passionate – and potentially game- changing – party conference speech in Birmingham, Badenoch firmly and finally ruled out any prospect of a pact with Reform. 'We are not uniting with that!' she declared contemptuously.

Fine. But at some point soon the fracture on the Right, which is currently opening the door to a fresh, full five-year term for Burnham and his unashamedly radical socialist agenda, must start to heal. And if a formal alignment between the Conservatives and Reform is out of the question, then Kemi Badenoch is going to have to find it within herself to extend magnanimity and mercy to her former colleagues.

According to Badenoch's team, this is something she will not presently countenance.

'She just won't entertain it,' one told me. 'Her view is, 'They've betrayed the Conservative Party. They can own it.'

But some senior members of the shadow cabinet are now giving serious consideration to trying to convince their leader to extend an olive branch to the increasingly disillusioned Tory turncoats.

According to one: 'It's something we need to start to consider. There are some people who have clearly crossed the Rubicon and can't be brought back. But there are also some misguided people who genuinely didn't understand what they were signing up to when they joined Reform. And the political symbolism of luring some of them back would be massive.'

Among those who have burned their bridges are Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick.

Braverman is viewed as irredeemably toxic, with her embrace of the narrative it is not possible to be English unless you are white reportedly even earning her a dressing-down from Nigel Farage and other senior Reform members.

Jenrick is seen as driven solely by ambition, and someone who is simply too untrustworthy to be brought back into the Tory fold.

It is no coincidence that he was mocked mercilessly and repeatedly in a replica of the Bayeux Tapestry that graced the Conservative conference.

But there are others whose souls can still potentially be saved, according to senior Tories. 'The person who people are watching most closely is Danny Kruger,' another shadow minister revealed to me. 'He doesn't look happy. He's not been pushing this ethno-nationalism rubbish. And he hasn't been as vicious as the others in his attacks on us. I think there could still be a way back for him.'

According to one senior Tory strategist, tentative feelers have been extended to some of the Reform defectors. 'It's not gone beyond casual conversations,' they claimed. 'No one is seriously talking about returning at the moment. But the lines of communication have been opened.'

The idea of what to do if these back-channel discussions eventually bear fruit is currently the focus of internal debate. One suggestion that has been mooted is the idea of a period of 'quarantine' for any MPs or councillors who do seek to return.

'They'd be asked to spend six months sitting as independents,' one Tory MP explained. 'During that time they'd have to vote with us and demonstrate their loyalty. Then after that they can regain the whip.'

One problem with that plan is the possibility – indeed likelihood – of a snap general election. If the Prime Minister goes to the country relatively early next year then there is precious little time for any returnee to prove their fealty. Indeed, there are a number of people in both Tory and Labour ranks who feel the emergence of such a 'return agreement' could actually trigger a snap poll.

'We're watching what's going on with the Tories and Reform very closely,' one minister told me. 'There are a lot of variables in deciding whether to call an early election. At the moment I think Andy's leaning against. But the one thing that would definitely change that is any indication that the Right is going to reunite.'

There are obvious risks for the Tories in any reconciliation with their estranged political cousins. Reform's decision to bring in so many members of the former government was a disastrous mis-step, one that fatally undermined perceptions of Nigel Farage's party as a vehicle for radical change.

It also created a major schism between the 'True Reformers' and the 'Tory Interlopers'. A schism that could well be replicated.

'I could see problems,' one wary shadow minister told me. 'There would be a lot of suspicion towards anyone who tries to re-rat at this stage of the political cycle.'

But the reality is the upside would far outweigh the downside. If there is no pact between the Tories and Reform, then the only alternative is for one of the two parties to become the sole standard bearer of the Right. And that in turn requires a reunification not just of activists and voters, but the politicians to lead them.

Kemi Badenoch may hate the Reform defectors for what they have done to her and her party. But she will almost certainly come to hate five more years of Andy Burnham a whole lot more.