The first YouGov voting intention poll since the 2024 election is out, and it has sent Westminster into a tailspin with its main finding: Reform is now almost neck-and-neck with Labour.
Labour has dropped from the 34 percent of support it received in the election to 26 per cent. Nigel Farage’s insurgent party is snapping at its heels on 25 per cent. The Tories have been pushed down into third place on 22 per cent. The Lib Dems are on 14 per cent, and the Greens on 8 per cent.
There are all kinds of reasons to stay calm about this, the major one being that we’re not due another election for four years or so, so fevered speculation based on polling ups and downs is a bit of a waste of energy. But it’s worth noting that the YouGov numbers today broadly match the poll published by Find Out Now last week – this is not an outlier. And even if there is no point trying to use these numbers to predict the future, a couple of aspects about this survey are still worth considering.
First, the two main parties are on 48 per cent collectively. That’s telling. More than half of voters don’t like either Labour or the Tories. (Last week’s Find Out Now poll had the figure even lower, at 45 per cent.) That’s worth keeping an eye on as the debate about Britain’s democratic systems grows more heated. As I wrote last week, Farage is fully on the case: last Monday, he spoke at the debate on that petition to call a new general election, saying the three million signatures showed disenchantment with the whole political system and that the old two-party system is falling apart. Expect to hear variations on that theme a lot this year – and poll findings like that back it up.
Second, it’s unclear how much of an impact Elon Musk’s persistent tweeting over Christmas has actually had. YouGov hasn’t run voting intention polls since July so we can’t compare – but Find Out Now has, and Reform hasn’t seen a big uptick in support since the last snap poll on 11 December (the gains came before that). This might suggest that interventions from across the Atlantic, while they may set the news agenda, don’t have as direct an impact on how voters view parties than we sometimes assume.
All the same, this poll is just the latest bit of evidence backing up two trends that have been underway since the general election in July. The first is that Labour is plummeting in popularity – but we knew that. The second is that Reform is vying with the Tories for opposition status.
Not, obviously, in parliamentary terms. The Conservatives have 121 MPs. Reform has five. But since the election, we have seen a concerted effort by Farage to paint his party as the only real opposition to a Labour government. Reform came second to Labour in 89 seats. Farage has described the two mainstream parties as the “uniparty”, and has been jostling to set that narrative that Reform is overtaking the Tories in support.
The Reform strategy is to present the insurgent party as an alternative opposition, in vibes if not in MP numbers. That means grabbing the media attention: there is only so much mental space even informed voters have for Westminster news. Most of that gets taken up by whatever the government is doing, and the opposition parties need to compete for the rest. So far, Farage has proved much more adept at making his side of the story front-page news than Kemi Badenoch has. The spat with the Tory leader over membership figures in the news void just after Christmas was a perfect example.
Another is the current row over councils potentially requesting to postpone May’s local elections in light of Labour’s devolution plans, possibly depriving Reform of a big chance to prove its poll numbers can translate into actual votes. The response from Reform has been fast and furious. “More than nine million people are in danger of being denied their democratic rights this year because 12 Conservative-controlled councils have asked to cancel their local elections,” tweeted the Reform account on Thursday. According to Reform chair Zia Yusuf: “Labour and the Tories are so terrified of Reform’s rise that they are colluding to rob the British people of their democratic rights. They will eventually face the electoral reckoning they deserve.” All part of the narrative that the two main parties are two sides of the same coin, and that Reform is the natural opposition to the status quo.
This has the potential to damage Labour in the future, but right now the unpopularity of the government is actually tempered by the fact that the Tories are too busy chasing their tails about Reform to be a strong opposition.
For the Tories, it’s another matter. The big question for Badenoch is how to respond to competition for second place.
Some Conservatives, most notably runner-up Robert Jenrick, think the only answer is to move Reform-wards and try to convince those tempted by Farage that they can find what they want under the Tory umbrella. The risk with this, as was pointed out during the leadership race, is that people who like what Reform are selling can simply support Reform – they have no reason to favour a Conservative party that is essentially Reform-lite, except for traditional sensibilities.
There are suspicions, particularly in the Labour camp, that some kind of merger between Reform and the Tories before the next election is inevitable. One Labour insider was quoting this week saying Reform “is really an offcut to the Tory Party”. There are those in the Conservative Party who would agree, and who see “uniting the right” as the only way forward.
But there is a large subsection of Tories who would balk at that suggestion – or, at least, the implication that the Conservatives should dance to Farage’s tune for the sake of such a unification.
Their view is that, just as a Labour government with a three-figure majority doesn’t have to worry about a slump in the polls halfway through year one (it should be worrying about bond markets and stagnating growth instead), an opposition party that doesn’t need to fight an election for four years can afford some breathing room. Badenoch’s original strategy, at least on paper, was to take time to rebuild the foundations of the party and figure out some core policies that are actually workable, rather than chasing whatever is in the news agenda that day. The thinking is that the advantages of being a 150-year-old party – institutional memory, data, brand loyalty – will win out over a newcomer in an actual election (at least under the current voting system). Until then, Reform’s energetic attack lines are just noise. For all his rallies of adoring fans, Farage is a divisive figure whose support has a hard ceiling. What matters is rebuilding Tory credibility long-term, not shoving Farage off the front pages right now.
This has all got slightly muddled by Elon Musk resurrecting the rape gangs scandal, which the Conservatives are trying to turn to their advantage (with, in my view, limited success). Badenoch hasn’t yet found a way to neutralise accusations about the Tories’ recent record in government. But again, there is lots of time before the next election, and little point (as some Tories argue) getting distracted by Reform at this moment.
That, of course, incentivises Reform to carry on being as distracting as possible. When you’re trading off vibes, you have to make the vibes dominate. So is Reform lined up to play the opposition? Let’s just say they’re doing their best. And this YouGov poll will help them.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Donald Trump’s empire of ego]
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