One in four Tory councillors support UKIP pact, but Hague rules it out

Almost a quarter of Conservative councillors would support a Tory/UKIP pact at the next general election.

Some 22% of almost 1,500 Tory councillors questioned said they would support a pact, according to a survey by ComRes for the BBC’s Sunday Politics show.

Two in three (66%) Tory councillors oppose a pact, according to the research, which came out on Sunday.

Foreign Secretary William Hague ruled out the possibility of a pact with UKIP on Sunday, saying: “We don’t make electoral pacts with other parties; we do make pacts with the voters of other parties and win over the voters of other parties as we’ve often done through history.

“And, of course, if someone is contemplating voting UKIP who would otherwise vote Conservative they could, by default, produce a Labour government which is the absolute opposite of what they might want on Europe for instance.”

Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg told Channel 4 News that a Tory/UKIP pact could be what the Conservatives need to defeat Labour at the next election in 2015.