The latest YouGov study makes for grim reading in No.10 Downing Street.
Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK is now just a point behind Britain’s incumbent Labour Party, according to a new poll.
Research by pollster YouGov — its first study of voting intention since last summer’s general election swept Labour into office on a landslide — put Starmer’s government on 26 percent of the vote, only a point clear of the populist outfit on 25 percent.
The Conservatives, who left office last summer after 14 years in power, were pushed into third place by Reform with 22 percent of public support.
It prompted immediate crowing from Farage, the anti-immigration Brexit campaigner who has set his sights on eating into Labour’s vote share after damaging the Tories in last year’s vote.
“The Tory brand is completely broken,” he posted on X. “We are the real opposition to this disastrous government.”
According to YouGov, Labour has shed 7 percent of its 2024 voters to the center-left Liberal Democrats, 6 percent to the Greens on the left, 5 percent to Reform UK on the right, and 4 percent to the Tories.
The polling outfit said just 54 percent of Labour’s 2024 voters would make the same decision to back the party in another election.
In recent weeks Farage’s party has been endorsed by the U.S. billionaire and Donald Trump advisor Elon Musk, who has used the X platform he owns to attack the incumbent Labour government. However, Farage and Musk had a high-profile falling out as the Reform leader distanced himself from a jailed far-right agitator backed by Musk.
While a general election is still years away on current timing, Labour has endured a tumultuous start to its time in office, amid sluggish economic growth, unpopular decisions over social security and tax, and a host of ethics rows. POLITICO’s Poll of Polls has Reform still ahead of the Conservatives, on 24 percent to 22 percent respectively, but with Labour four points clear of Farage’s outfit on 28 percent.
