Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party overtook Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives in an opinion poll for the first time ahead of Britain’s election on July 4.
The poll by YouGov for the Times newspaper put Reform UK on 19 per cent, up from 17 per cent previously, and the Conservative Party unchanged on 18 per cent. The opposition Labour Party topped the poll with 37 per cent.
The survey of 2,211 people was carried out June 12-13, after Sunak pledged to cut £17 billion (US$21.70 billion) of taxes for working people in his party’s election manifesto.
YouGov noted it was “worth keeping sight of the fact that these figures are well within the margin of error of one another – we will not be able to tell for some time whether Reform can sustain or improve their position relative to the Conservatives”.
Still, it added: “The fact that Nigel Farage’s party are neck and neck with the governing Conservatives is a seismic shift in the voting landscape”.
Reform’s poll rating has risen since Farage, best known for his successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, said he was returning to frontline politics, taking over leadership of the party and standing for election to parliament.
“This is the inflection point. The only wasted vote now is a Conservative vote, we are the challengers to Labour and we are on our way,” Farage said in a video posted on X.
A small right-wing party, founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party, Reform backs populist causes such as tougher immigration laws.
Asked if the trend would stick, a Conservative lawmaker who declined to be named said: “Yes. I think people are fed up with the Tories (Conservatives), but not with Conservatism. So they are moving to another Conservative Party”.
Sunak’s campaign has also been hit by sharp criticism after he left D-Day memorial events in France earlier than other world leaders.
Other opinion polls show the Conservatives much further ahead of Reform.
As of Thursday, Labour was on 44.1 per cent versus 22.4 per cent for the Conservatives in Bloomberg’s rolling 14-day average using data from 11 polling companies. That gives them a margin of 21.7 points. Reform’s average rating was 12.9 per cent.
Despite overtaking Sunak’s Conservatives in Thursday’s poll – which reflected the share of a nationwide vote – Reform is not forecast to win many, if any, parliamentary seats.
Its support is spread comparatively evenly across the country, whereas backing for the larger and more established parties is more concentrated by geographic areas.
Britain has a first-past-the-post electoral system, meaning Reform could pick up millions of votes across the country without winning any of parliament’s 650 individual constituencies.
A win for Labour, as many expect, would come after 14 years in opposition.
One of Labour leader Keir Starmer’s first tasks if he finds himself in Downing Street on July 5 will be to prepare for a crunch Nato summit in Washington the following week, and to host a meeting of European leaders.
He says he will scrap the Tories’ plan to deport failed asylum seekers to Rwanda and will recognise Palestinian sovereignty as part of the peace process.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Bloomberg
