As we approach the elections on 7 May, I’d like to take a quick look at a new poll of voting intention produced by YouGov for the Times today. It’s novel because it includes two new challenger parties in British politics as distinct options, rather than grouping them under the nebulous “Other” category. The parties are: Your Party, now led by Jeremy Corbyn after a power struggle with Zarah Sultana, polling at one per cent; and Restore Britain, a far-right alternative to Reform led by ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe, polling at 4 per cent.
From this Corbyn figure, we can say that the Greens have succeeded in beating Your Party to become the obvious left alternative to Labour. Luckily for both sides, Corbyn doesn’t seem too bothered by that and has said he is happy to work alongside the Greens. There was a period last autumn, when Your Party was setting up and before Zack Polanski had become the Green leader, when it was not clear which party would claim that mantle – now the question is settled in the run-up to May.
Then there is Restore, a party that has implied in its official literature that only white people can be “native Brits” and that wants to make life in Britain difficult for religious minorities by, for example, banning kosher and halal food. It is running just a few council candidates in May because, tellingly, Lowe is worried about standing candidates without thorough vetting of their previous political associations and social media activity. It exists largely as a phenomenon on X, constantly attacking Nigel Farage and Reform for being insufficiently right-wing.
In previous weeks, one of the more unorthodox pollsters had put Lowe’s party on between 7 and 8 per cent, but these polls had been commissioned by Lowe himself, so I was taking them with a pinch of salt. This YouGov poll, however, suggests the Restore phenomenon is small but real.
Its 4 per cent is a road to zero seats. But it is enough to bring Reform’s number down to 24 per cent in today’s YouGov poll. Lowe is now doing to Farage what Farage did to a succession of Tory leaders, standing to their right and siphoning support.
There are two possible ways in which this could harm Farage. The first is that it hurts Reform’s polling lead. The second, more worrying possibility, is that Farage does what Conservative leaders did in response to him in years gone by and moves further right in an attempt to win over Lowe’s people. At the moment, this seems unlikely. Farage is paying little attention to either Lowe or YouGov, after he had a major spat with the firm over their polling techniques a few weeks ago. Instead, this morning he will be taking succour from the work of rival pollsters More In Common, who have Reform on 30 per cent. But for how long can he ignore Lowe’s flea bites?
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: The end of the American empire]
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