Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party overtook the Conservative Party in an opinion poll for the first time on Thursday ahead of Britain’s election on July 4.
The poll by YouGov for the Times newspaper put Reform UK on 19%, up from 17% previously, and the Conservative Party unchanged on 18%. The opposition Labour Party topped the poll with 37%.
The survey of 2,211 people was carried out June 12-13, after Sunak pledged to cut 17 billion pounds of taxes for working people in his party’s election manifesto.
The results came out moments before an ITV debate between senior figures in the seven main British parties.
Farage wasted no time in gloating about the poll, saying in his opening statement: “Just before we came on air we overtook the Conservatives in the national opinion polls.
“We are now the opposition to Labour.”
In a flip of Conservative campaign rhetoric, he also claimed that voting for the Tories over Reform would enable a Labour government.
A small right-wing party, founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party, Reform backs populist causes such as tougher immigration laws.
Asked if the trend would stick, a Conservative lawmaker who declined to be named told Reuters: “Yes. I think people are fed up with the Tories (Conservatives), but not with Conservatism. So they are moving to another Conservative party.”
Other opinion polls show the Conservatives much further ahead of Reform.
Despite overtaking Sunak’s Conservatives in Thursday’s poll – which reflected the share of a nationwide vote – Reform is not forecast to win many, if any, parliamentary seats.
Its support is spread comparatively evenly across the country, Reuters explains, whereas backing for the larger and more established parties is more concentrated by geographic areas.
Britain has a first-past-the-post electoral system, meaning Reform could gather millions of votes across the country without winning any of parliament’s 650 individual constituencies.
(With information from Reuters and Sky News)
