Reform UK surges ahead in the polls
Reform UK is not, of course, going to be Labour’s main opposition in the next government, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times. On the assumption that Nigel Farage wins his seat in Clacton, “he will be one of a tiny number of Reform MPs, and that number may even be one”.
Nonetheless, enthusiasm for his party is growing. The latest polls put Reform just one point behind the Tories. According to the latest findings from strategic consultancy Redfield & Wilton, Reform is the second most popular party (after Labour) with voters aged 45-54 and 55-64 (the Tory “base”) and those aged 18-24. Farage was also the clear winner of Friday’s
BBC seven-way election debate in a snap YouGov poll.
A low turnout on 4 July and a “down-the-middle split of the right-leaning vote” between Reform and the Tories could “gift Labour a landslide majority based on fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn got in 2017”, says Patrick O’Flynn in The Telegraph. Keir Starmer could end up with 400-plus MPs facing an 80-strong Lib Dem opposition, led by Ed Davey, a “man who disagrees with Starmer about almost nothing”. Farage might see the “sweeping away” of so many Tories as a “price worth paying” to create a “new right in his own image”, but the main result will be to “move the country to the left”, agrees William Hague in The Times.
Tory wets warn Farage is a “dangerous demagogue” yet offer no explanation for failing to use an 80-seat majority to reform the NHS, look after our armed forces or control immigration – the root of so many problems from our housing crisis to welfare bill, says Allison Pearson in The Telegraph. “So, yes, vote Reform” – or any party or individual who puts Britons first and wants our young “to have hope”. Don’t blame Reform for a landslide Labour victory – if Tory voters have found themselves politically homeless, it’s because the party “has trashed our home”.