 "For 1st time, Reform UK ahead of ruling Labour Party in survey")
For the first time, the far-right party Reform UK has inched ahead of the ruling Labour Party in a survey.
In an opinion poll conducted by YouGov earlier this month, 25 per cent of voters favoured Reform UK compared to the ruling Labour Party that was favoured by 24 per cent voters. The Conservatives, the principal Opposition party, was favoured by just 21 per cent voters.
Compared to the last survey, the Reform UK gained 2 per cent voters, the Labour lost 3 per cent, and Conservatives lost 1 per cent.
Even though Sir Keir Starmer led Labour to a landslide victory in the last year’s general elections, the party is currently struggling with a popularity crisis. The party’s stance on taxation amid a struggling economy —the British economy grew 0 per cent in the last quarter for which figures are available— have garnered it unpopularity. At the same time, the Reform UK has surged in popularity on the back of anti-immigrant politics and transnational wave of far-right populism — helped in no small part by Elon Musk who has vowed to prop far-right regimes across the Western world .
While Reform UK has gone past Labour, the findings are within the margin of error.
The survey’s findings are much more damning for the Conservatives as it is their base that Reform UK is infiltrating into. It was visible in the 2024 British elections as well where Labour’s victory was driven less by a surge in support for Labour but more by flight of Conservatives’ voters to Reform UK.
Is Conservative Party facing existential threat from Reform UK?
The surge in Reform UK’s popularity has come at the cost of Conservative Party, not the Labour.
A third of people —33 per cent— who voted for Conservatives in the last year’s elections said they would vote for the Reform UK now, according to the survey.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsNearly half of Conservative voters —47 per cent— support a merger of the Reform UK and Conservative Party.
Those surveyed also believe that the merged party would be more like Reform UK than the Conservative Party.
In the 2024 British elections, even though the Labour won a landslide victory with 411 MPs against Conservatives’ 121, the margin of victory was the slimmest in more than seven decades.
In 2024, the Labour gained just 1.5 per cent more votes but won 149 more seats. This was because while Labour just gained 1.5 per cent votes during these two elections, the Conservatives lost 20 per cent votes as Reform ate into its vote-share.
In an analysis in The Spectator, Fraser Nelson noted that at least 145 Conservative MPs lost just because Reform UK divided the conservative voters. This way, Reform UK essentially paved way for Labour’s landslide victory by stopping the consolidation of conservative voters.
“There’s just Farage – who enters parliament with just four other MPs. Reform UK’s main effect in this election has been to split the conservative vote and, in so doing, open up more constituencies to the Labour and the Lib Dems. Jacob Rees-Mogg was the highest profile of at least 145 Tories who would have won had Reform voters gone to the Conservatives,” noted Fraser in his analysis.
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