‘I’m back’. Nigel Farage’s two-word tweet on Monday heralded the return of one of Westminster’s great celebrities. Barely 48 hours later, we are already seeing the impact that he is making in the polls. A YouGov survey published this afternoon suggests Reform are now on 17 per cent of the vote – just two points behind the Tories. It is the first polling done since Farage announced he was standing in Clacton and returning as leader. ‘It’s all about momentum’, he told me last week in Dover. Reform looks to have that in spades.
The survey – which gives Labour a 21 point lead on 40 per cent – is also the first done by YouGov since it announced it was tweaking its methodology. In a statement, the polling giant confirmed that ‘Reform UK's vote share rose three points regardless of which methodology was used, and so their increase in vote is not related to the methodology change.’ Under the previous methodology, Labour would have had a 27 point lead and Reform would have been on equal polling to the Tories.
Some Conservative backbenchers are sceptical. ‘I’m starting to thinking there is a polling conspiracy,’ says one. ‘It’s just not like that on the doors.’ It is true to say that Reform’s ground game is limited and that, under Richard Tice, they continued to flatter to deceive. But three points is still a decisive shift and one enough to hurt the Tories. For them, the danger is that the direction of travel only continues to accelerate as Farage gets more exposure – starting with the seven-way leaders’ debate on Friday.
For much of 2023, Tory MPs asked themselves the question ‘92 or 97’ – whether this election result would produce a narrow majority or a crushing defeat. The real danger for them is that the answer is Canada ‘93, when the governing centre-right party in Ottawa got wiped out by a party called – you guessed it – Reform.
Farage has repeatedly said that this transatlantic precedent was a factor in the renaming of the Brexit party back in 2020. If his party’s polling continues to improve, then Rishi Sunak’s Tories will fear that what happened in Canada could be about to repeat itself here on 4 July.
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