Harriet Cross: Reform aren’t driving the debate at Westminster

Tuesdays are generally the busiest day here, Harriet Cross tells me as she greets me in Westminster’s Portcullis House. “People try to get as much done as they can today,” she says, leading me away from the modern, bustling lobby area that sits under a vast curved glass ceiling into hundreds-year-old hallways, where modern architecture is swapped for curved stone archways and statues, towards her office.  

Her day has been no different. In the morning, she participated in a food security meeting and a debate on the Family Farm Tax, chamber business in the afternoon, and later, her duties as a Conservative assistant whip.  

Moving through what feels like endless rabbit warren of hallways and floors, she jokes: “I’m still getting used to this, this is just one of the routes I’ve familiarised myself with so far.”
Immediately, it’s clear that Cross is fizzing with energy and plans. She is a very driven individual, is personable, warm and a wit. She has come into politics to effect change and she tells me she has always had her sight set on Westminster.  

She was born in Harrogate but only lived there for a few years before moving to West Cork, where her mother is from. Cross attended one of the oldest schools in Ireland, Bandon Grammar, and recalls those years as being very carefree. “It was a very remote part of the country. We lived in a small coastal village and I loved it. There was so much freedom, and I think that’s why my parents wanted me to grow up there. There was nothing around you, it was very wild, and they took the approach of just go off and entertain yourself. It really taught me to be happy outside.”

Once she had completed her GCSEs, her parents moved Cross and her two siblings to Aberdeenshire, where her father is from. He owned the community pharmacy in Braemar until he retired, and her mother was a nurse.

She tells me her upbringing made her “a rural girl”, a theme at the forefront of her politics today. 

Before returning to live in Aberdeenshire, she studied zoology at Imperial College London and then completed a masters degree in rural land and business management at Reading, followed by a two-year chartership in rural surveying in Cambridge. 

“Once that was over, I wanted to go back to Aberdeenshire as quickly as possible. Whatever the business was, it didn’t matter; it was all about the location. It’s always been when I’m going back to Aberdeenshire I’m going home, it’s never going to be the opposite.”   

She made the move back to Aberdeenshire in 2018 and began involving herself in Conservative politics. She spent a few years volunteering with her local MSP Alexander Burnett. In the space of just a few years, she was selected to contest the Aberdeen Donside seat at the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, which was ultimately won by the SNP’s Jackie Dunbar. “We knew we were never going to win,” she says. 

It was seen as an chance to allow Cross to “get her feet under the table” and learn how to have a successful election. And it was deemed a success as the Tories solidified second place, growing the party’s lead over Scottish Labour from the 2016 result, increasing its vote share by eight per cent.  

Carrying on in her day job, the question of what’s next was left lingering. I ask Cross why she has always seen herself at Westminster rather than Holyrood. She says it’s a hard question to answer, but that she’s always pictured herself in Commons, emphasising that “that’s not a reflection of the standing of the two parliaments”. 

“I think in terms of the things I’m interested in, energy security, for example, that’s reserved, and I suppose I just saw myself fitting in here more than with what is reserved than what is going on up the road.” 

She points to the history of her seat. Although it was subject to border change at the general election, many titans of Westminster have served her constituents, such as Alex Salmond and Sir Malcolm Bruce. “It’s got a lot of history behind it. I’m aware of it, and I think a lot of people here are aware of it. And it’s not just because of the people who have had it before; in terms of Scotland, it’s an important seat. It’s a good chunk of Aberdeenshire, it links into the energy industry, the farming industry, and some fishing with it being the commuter belt for products that come up and down from Peterhead. It’s one that I’m proud to say is mine.” 

Sources within the Conservatives have told Holyrood that Cross is being regarded as one to watch within the party, and she has already been given an important responsibility as an assistant whip. She’s a little uncomfortable when I put this to her, but it’s obvious that she’s sharp and she speaks like she has been at Westminster for longer than six months.   

Despite that, she says her only ambition now is to hold her seat, acknowledging its history of being a safe Liberal Democrat seat for over 30 years and then swapping every election between the SNP and the Conservatives since Alex Salmond won it in 2015. “That’s what the game is, we’re constituency MPs first, and I am focusing on the areas that matter most to the people I represent.   

Since her election to Gordon and Buchan, Cross has been very vocal on two key issues – the UK Government’s stance on the oil and gas sector and the impact it is having on the Just Transition and agriculture. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget has caused a massive issue for the agriculture sector, Cross says. And it’s a key sector in her constituency she’s clearly concerned about it. “It’s devasting, and there’s no surprise that the industry is so up in arms about it. £1m is a lot of money, but for most, it’s in land and equipment – money farmers never see. 

“It’s a vehicle in which food is produced, it just happens to have a monetary value. And it means we’re going to lose all this heritage, expertise, stewardship of the land, and the potential to produce so that farmers can raise money out of effectively nowhere to pay a bill that they don’t have the profits to cover. It’s also resulting in people delaying investment because they know there’s a bill coming. It’s impacting productivity, supply chains and ultimately the wider rural economy.”  

It’s no secret that the Labour government has a much different vision for the transition away from oil and gas reliance than the previous administration, and Reeves’ move to increase the windfall tax to 38 per cent and extend it until 2030, is causing more job uncertainty for Cross’ constituents.     

The move led US oil firm Apache to announce an end to North Sea operations in 2029 a week after the Budget was presented to parliament, confirming it would mean job losses in the north east.   

Cross is concerned with the speed at which Labour is pushing forward with net zero and struggles to see the logic in its manifesto pledge to deliver 100 per cent clean power to the UK by 2030. “They’ve just picked a number that ends with a zero. If it was 2022, they’d still pick that number. And that means decisions are being made too quickly, without full scrutiny.  

“It’s great how many jobs it [the Just Transition] will create, but it’s the current jobs that we need to worry about, and those are clearly at risk because the amount of impact placed in the oil and gas producers is driving investment and skills elsewhere, making jobs in the UK harder to obtain and retain. The speed is threatening jobs being moved abroad before we can transition over, risking our supply chain.  

“If you ask anyone in the sector in Aberdeen, ‘how long do you think you’ll have your job?’, no one will be able to give you an honest answer.” 

The general election was a crushing defeat for the Conservatives. It reduced the party to just 121 seats – with only 24 per cent of them held by women, which was the same in 2019. 

It was not as bleak of a picture in Scotland for the Conservatives on the morning of 5 July as the rest of the UK, and while there may be some comfort in that Cross is honest about the lessons her party needs to learn.  

“We need to accept that we lost the trust of the public, and that can’t be assumed to come back instantly. 

“It needs to be earned back, and we will do that if we listen to the public, take the lessons we were given and act in the interests of the public. I firmly believe the public is at its heart conservative. It’s very much in the British nature to work hard and want what’s best for you and your family, and not to be dictated to by higher powers and to take responsibility for what you are doing.”  

As the Conservatives lick their wounds and try to wrestle back the trust of the electorate, the party has elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader in a race that took many twists and turns before the final round of voting. 

Cross did not back Badenoch, Robert Jenrick or James Cleverly, who were seen by many as the three most likely candidates. She backed Tom Tugendhat and said during the contest that he “gets Scotland” and was “the best hope” for the Conservatives. But she’s very upbeat about Badenoch, pointing to her forming “a very strong” opposition frontbench “from all sides of the party” that will “give her views from everywhere”, including Jenrick, former home secretary Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Claire Coutinho, and Andrew Bowie.  

While Badenoch does seem to have united her MPs after the leadership election, the threat from Reform UK appears to be intensifying. At the time of the interview, YouGov released its first voter intention poll since the general election and it made for grim reading for the Conservatives. It suggested that in the six months since Britain went to the polls support for Reform had grown significantly, placing Nigel Farage’s party above the Tories with 25 and 22 per cent of the vote respectively, and just one point behind Labour.  

It’s hard to argue the party hasn’t been attracting coverage, but Cross is clear that it isn’t driving the debate at Westminster. 

“You hear that a lot, but they simply are not. They’re actually very quiet here, they may pop up in the chamber occasionally, but a lot of what they do is shout. It’s superficial things that they’re saying.  

“They may be saying what some of the public is saying in a public arena, but they are not driving things forward. They’re basically just reacting.”  

She tells me Reform is “very good at coming up with issues” but “they aren’t providing any solutions to them”. “What’s its policy on immigration? They just say it’s not good enough. That works for so long, it works on social media in 140 characters, but it doesn’t work when you’re running a country or planning for the future. 

“We can’t shy away from the fact that Reform has attracted a lot of attention, potentially attracted support. I question how thin that is, and I also think it’s very broad support. They’ve taken people from all parties and none. Holding that coalition together, as the Conservatives probably showed in 2019, is very difficult. You cannot please everyone and I think what it is selling at the moment is Reform is the solution to everything. It’s not.” 

There’s been a lot of change “nationally and globally” since the pandemic, which has caused people to reassess what they want from their lives, she says. “It’s our job to act accordingly to that, not to react.” 

Cross is confident that Badenoch will be able to steer the newfound support for Reform and regain the public’s trust that her party lost in the years leading up to 2024. “She knows what we need to do. We aren’t having a general election any time soon, we don’t need to jump and react, we need to think about what the country needs going forward and how best to deliver that. And we aren’t going to do that if we react to every quip and quim that someone comes out with, or anytime the media says something hasn’t been done quickly enough.   

“The present time is about working to understand what went wrong, and to make sure that as we build the party back we are offering the country something that they want.”

She adds: “People are expecting a lot from two months [of Badenoch since becoming leader]. There seems to be a lot of huge expectation that suddenly we would be back in everyone’s good books, and they would be crying out for the Conservatives. That’s not the case and we never thought that it would be.”