DESPERATE Conservative rightwinger Jacob Rees-Mogg urged PM Rishi Sunak today to make Nigel Farage a Tory minister.

The former Commons leader and cartoon aristocrat turned GB News presenter said that unity with Reform as part of a general shift to the right was the only way to avert election disaster.

Mr Rees-Mogg said that Conservative candidacies should be offered to Mr Farage, Reform leader Richard Tice and deputy leader Ben Habib, last heard of saying migrants should be left to drown in the Channel.

“A big, open and comprehensive offer to Reform,” with Farage in government as well as Boris Johnson returning as foreign secretary could put election victory “within reach” he claimed.

However, his love for the hard-right Reform party looked to be unrequited. Mr Tice categorically ruled out any form of agreement.

He said: “There will be no deals with the Tories. They are using our policy platform as a sort of crib sheet for what they think they should support on gender ID, solar farms, immigration and so on.

“Fourteen years of failure, of zero delivery, shows they cannot be believed.  We are not that stupid nor are voters.”

The Tory Party also discounted any talk of a pact and ruled out any suggestion of making Reform figures candidates, suggesting that Mr Rees-Mogg’s plan is more aimed at post-election positioning for a revived right.

The idea was popular with Daily Telegraph readers, however, who backed it by nearly two-to-one in an online poll.

At present Reform is polling around 12 per cent of the vote, only 10 per cent behind Mr Sunak’s beleaguered Tories.