Nigel Farage’s Reform party has overtaken the Conservatives in a poll for the first time in a national poll.
The Tories were pushed into third in the survey, by pollsters YouGov one point behind Reform on 18 percent to 19 percent
The findings will come as a body blow to Rishi Sunak after a disastrous election campaign and risks triggering panic among many Tory MPs.
As the TV showdown opened he told millions of viewers “we are now the opposition to Labour”.
…
The poll found support for Reform had increased by two points to 19 per cent while the Tories were unchanged on 18 per cent.
At the end of the debate, Mr Farage said to Ms Mordaunt: “A vote for you is actually now a vote for Labour.”
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Many Tories now will be wondering if this was a freak poll or if more with Reform going further in front are set to be unleashed over the last three weeks of the election campaign. If Reform builds up a lead of five or more points it could see the world’s oldest political party go into a meltdown and face a wipeout.
The Electoral Calculus prediction based on this poll:
Labour: 462
Tories: 68
Lib Dems: 68
Reform: 4 (Clacton, Ashfield (Lee Anderthal’s seat), Boston & Skegness, Wellingborough & Rushden (Peter Bone’s old seat))
Green: 2 (Brighton Pavilion, Bristol Central)
SNP: 21
Plaid: 4
Independents: 3 (Birmingham Ladywood, Islington North, Rochdale)
Which begs an important question: if the Tories and Lib Dems tie for the second largest party, who gets to be the opposition?
It’s unprecedented but ultimately the Speaker decides.
I imagine that if, e.g., the SNP, Greens and Plaid Cymru agreed to back the Lib Dems to be the Opposition, the Speaker would take that into account. If neither the Conservatives nor the Lib Dems were able to get the support of smaller parties, I’m sure that in this scenario he would pick the Conservatives, on the basis that they had the most votes and therefore the most public support.
Which begs an important question: if the Tories and Lib Dems tie for the second largest party, who gets to be the opposition?
The leaders have to fight for it.
Well I reckon Ed Davey could take Rishi Sunak, but if Sunak quits as leader and Suella Braverman takes over, I reckon she probably bites, so I’m not sure I’d like Davey’s chances in that fight. Now if it was making both parties fight, the Lib Dems would win that because the Tories wouldn’t have each other’s backs, so superior teamwork and a lack of compulsive backstabbing in the Lib Dems would give them the tactical advantage.
I appreciate the effort you’ve put in wargaming the scenarios and I think you have the correct solutions to the scenarios.
I think that, rather than a mass brawl, we’d need Thunderdome rules and Ed Davey wins easily - he looks like he’s had a few scraps in the past and is a six footer, so has serious reach and weight advantages. A last minute tag in of Braverman would definitely change the odds as I doubt there is nothing she wouldn’t do to win.
Yeah, Ed Davey seems to have all the niceness and decentness of a guy who knows he could fight if he wanted to. And all his stunts lately, in which he appears to have come to no harm, say a lot about his physical fitness. I’d put money on him to squish Sunak in a heartbeat.
Penny has experience welding the Sword.
Advantage Tories.
Assuming Penny decided against using the sword on Nutella.
There can be only one!
…leader of the opposition!
The possibility of Reichform taking Ashfield doesn’t surprise me in the least. I lived there for a while and it’s one of the most beligerent, mean-spirited places I’ve ever known. I’ve lived in deprived places before but I’ve never known a populations so nasty.
Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. Deprived areas can definitely have lovely people in them - I live in a deprived area myself, and while there’s definitely some specific spots that I would avoid, most people tend to be… well, normal, decent people. But I can definitely see how somewhere that would vote for Lee Anderthal and then vote Reform would not have the same vibe as a deprived area currently eyeing up a Labour or Lib Dem candidate with genuine interest.
Well Farage’s plan seems to be working.
*Putin’s plan.
Anyone remember the Lib Dems coming second in polls in 2010?
Where they won 57 seats to the conservatives 306.
Labour got 258
(Just for anyone else that wanted to know.)
Is this going to make much of a difference with FPTP? I doubt it.
It won’t make a huge difference to how many seats Reform get (though with the way they’ve been polling, Electoral Calculus suggests they might get 4-5), but what it does is cuts into votes for the Conservatives, which ends up helping Labour and the Lib Dems. Most of the predictions I’ve put into Electoral Calculus based on the latest polls have had Reform taking enough votes from the Tories that the Lib Dems end up being the second largest party. That’s a pretty big change, despite FPTP!
That would be interesting. God damn this is going to be an exciting election.
It is pretty exciting, isn’t it? I’m actually in Canada the week of the election, so in the event of a Conservative wipeout, I reckon the Canadian news coverage of that would be pretty epic, since it would repeat their 1993 election.
Not really, and it’s still unlikely Reform will win any seats. Clacton probably being their best shot.
But it’s more about the symbolism of the most successful party in British history being relegated to third place in the polls.
Not to be pedantic (ha-ha, just kidding, I love being pedantic) but this is still a statistical tie, rather than a real lead, which would have to be 3 points plus. Additionally, it’s only one poll, and it’s from YouGov, who have consistently shown lower votes for the Big Two and higher votes for the smaller parties than other polling companies, even before their methodology change, which increased the gap between them and other pollsters in that regard.
What’s more, Reform have consistently underperformed the polls in actual elections. Granted, Farage has increased their vote since he decided to stand, but the real elections suggest that he’s increased it from a much lower basis than the polls would have us believe.
Take this with a tablespoon of salt, is what I’m saying.
We may sneer at ‘Good old Nige’ but he’s getting airtime and people are going to vote for him and his party, however cack we think are.
Now that may hurt the tories, which is all well and good, but if they keep getting publicity and what have you it’s going to draw away votes from more deserving candidates.
Also hilarious as it was, we should not be condoning throwing of objects etc. at politicians, however much we dislike them. That’s a slippery slope and could lead to some serious injuries. What appens when somebody decides it’s funny and will get laughs on Tik Tok to throw acid or bleach? Or a glass bottle full of piss?
We’ve seen what his ‘patriotic’ supporters are like and we don’t need more of them.
What appens when somebody decides it’s funny and will get laughs on Tik Tok to throw acid or bleach? Or a glass bottle full of piss?
Oh get off it. Whataboutism at its finest most stupid extreme. Somebody throws a milkshake and you’re going oh but it could have been acid, no it couldn’t it wasn’t actually thought it was acid and the last moment it luckily transmuted into milkshake. People are responsible for their own actions other people doing things which are similar but not the same degree a call to escalation.
So you’re saying it’s alright to attack politicians that you don’t like?
I expect that bloke that stabbed Jo Cox said that. And the other one that stabbed the tory MP.
You’re as bad as they are. Goodbye.
You are bloody ridiculous. You are not interested in engaging in a good faith discussion. No one said anything about stabbing people, or hurting them. Throwing some milkshake on Nigel farage is literally the least he deserves.
It is not equivalent to murder you absolute lunatic.
“You support someone who threw a soft object at someone? Well supporting an act is the same as doing an act and throwing is the same as stabbing and a soft object is the same as a knife and I am a very smart and nuanced person you would love to spend time around.”
- Baggins, probably
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The poll results were released minutes before Mr Farage was due to take part in a 7-way debate on ITV, with Conservative cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt, among others.
The words will spark dread among Tory MPs who are seeing their majorities disappearing as their voters turn their backs on Rishi Sunak and defect to Reform.
Many Tory MPs are terrified Reform will put the final nail in their coffin, not by winning their seat but by taking enough votes to hand it to Labour or the Lib Dems.
Reform also claimed they had made history when they unveiled a Party Election Broadcast that turned TV screens black for nearly five minutes – except for the message: “Britain is broken.
At the weekend he was accused of going into hiding after he was forced to make a grovelling apology for leaving the D-Day commemorations early to take part in a TV interview.
Earlier this week Mr Farage pulled out of a high-profile BBC interview as his Reform party faced a row over whether the UK should have appeased Hitler.
The original article contains 757 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
