ANALYSIS

A silver lining for the UK Tories: it won’t be bad as Canada 1993

WHEN YOU COULD FIT THE TORY CAUCUS 

IN A PHONE BOOTH

KIM CAMPBELL CANADA'S FIRST FEMALE AND SHORTEST SERVING PM

WITH US PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

IN 1993 KIM BECAME KNOWN FOR HAVING SAID 'ELECTIONS ARE NO TIME TO DEAL WITH THE ISSUES"

19 Jun 2024
AUTHORS
Dr Zain Mohyuddin


There has been much discussion about whether the upcoming election will result in the Tories suffering an extinction-level loss on the scale the Canadian Progressive Conservatives endured in 1993. Zain Mohyuddin writes that the more efficient geographic distribution of the British Conservatives’ support and the less territorialised nature of the British party system suggests the Conservatives will not experience an electoral disaster on the same scale as their Canadian counterparts.

With the Conservatives 20 points behind Labour for the last 12 months, psephologists have speculated whether the Tories will suffer an electoral wipeout on a scale similar to that suffered by the Progressive Conservatives (PCs) in Canada in 1993.

It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of the PC’s collapse. Just five years earlier, under the leadership of Brian Mulroney, the PCs won a second consecutive majority with 43% of the vote. Following the 1993 election, however, they were reduced to two seats in the 295-seat Canadian Parliament.

The Mulroney majorities of 1984 and 1988 were based on an unlikely coalition of socially conservative populists from Western Canada and Quebec nationalists. By the early 1990s, right-wing conservatives, particularly in the West, felt a growing sense of alienation. They believed the PCs had strayed too far in accommodating Quebec’s demands for special status and had pursued policies on bilingualism, multiculturalism, and deficit spending that were at odds with their values. In Quebec, nationalists felt betrayed by the PCs’ support of the Charlottetown Accord – a proposed set of constitutional amendments that failed to pass in a 1992 referendum – which they felt did not grant Quebec enough powers.

Some polls have put the Conservatives at 18%, only two percent higher than the PC’s vote share in 1993. However, there are several reasons to believe that the expected Conservative defeat will not be as dire as the one suffered by the PC.

The PC vote share was geographically highly dispersed and very inefficient. Although they received at least 10% of the popular vote in every province, they did not get above thirty percent in any provinces and were above 20% only in the four Atlantic provinces – the region with the fewest available seats. By comparison, the Conservatives are competitive in many more constituencies. There are 258 seats in which the Conservatives are projected to win are least 30% or more of the vote. In another 51 of the seats they won in 2019, they are 5 points or less behind the leading party.*

Much has been made of Labour potentially regaining the Red Wall and the defection of Conservative voters to Reform. Currently, 14% of 2019 Conservative supporters say they will support Reform, and 12% indicate they will switch to Labour. Of course, one great uncertainty is the 25% of voters who supported the Tories in 2019 but say they ‘Don’t Know‘ how they will vote.

Even if most of these ‘don’t knows’ do not return to the Conservatives, it will still not approach the scale defections the PCs suffered, which reflects, in part, the greater strength of partisan identification among British Conservatives than their Canadian counterparts.** The PCs only retained the vote of only 22% of the voters they had attracted in 1988. They were particularly hurt by the defection of a large group of voters in areas of the country that were crucial to previous victories. In Quebec, 4 out of 5 voters who supported the PCs in the previous election switched to another party, with the majority turning to the newly formed pro-sovereignty party, the Bloc Quebecois. In Alberta and BC, only one in seven voters who supported the PCs in 1988 did so in 1993, with over 40% voting for Reform, whose main concern was the perceived mistreatment of the West.

The Reform Party of Canada received only 19% of the vote nationally but won the second-most seats among the national parties due to its highly concentrated support in Western Canada (see Table 1). The geographically dispersed nature of Reform UK’s support – there are 75 seats in which it is projected to win more than 15% of the vote, but it is not projected to win 25% or more of the vote in any constituencies – means that it is unlikely to come close to achieving the same level of electoral success as their Canadian namesake.

For the British Tories, the threat posed by Reform stems from the prospect of substantial vote splitting on the right, thereby handing many seats to Labour. According to one projection, there are 181 constituencies where the difference between the Labour and Conservative vote share is smaller than Reforms’ projected vote share. By contrast, vote splitting on the right played a far less significant role across Canada in the collapse of the PC. The province where this was the exception was seat-rich Ontario, where the combined Reform and PC vote share in twenty-five seats exceeded that of the Liberals.

The PCs were hurt by the absence of fragmentation of the left, specifically, the collapse in support in Central and Eastern Canada of the country’s social democratic party, the New Democratic Party (NDP). In Atlantic Canada, the region where the PCs received their highest level of support, the NDP had historically done well, but these races were now essentially two-party contests with voters on the left coalescing around the Liberals. So, despite winning 30 percent or more of the vote in 11 constituencies in this region, the PCs failed to win a single seat in any of the four provinces of Atlantic Canada.

One factor that may help British Conservatives is that there a several constituencies where they are competitive, and there is fragmentation on the left. Specifically, there are 9 seats where the Conservatives are projected to win or are 7% within the leading party and the combined vote share of the Liberal Democrats, Labour, and Green is greater than or equal to 50%. This split on the left may hand some seats to the Conservatives. Of course, the extent to which this will occur depends on the level of anti-Tory tactical voting.

In each region of Canada, the electoral threat confronting the Conservatives was different. The threats to the British Conservatives also come on multiple flanks, making it difficult to determine the optimal electoral strategy. Not only do they face the prospect of Reform eating into their support, but also the threat of losing seats to parties on their left. There are 87 seats in which the Labour and the Conservatives contest is a tossup (the leading party’s lead is less than 5% ahead). The Liberal Democrats are also positioned to make significant gains in the South East and South West at the expense of the Conservatives. Of the 50 seats in these regions that the Conservatives won in 2019 and the leading parties are the Lib Dems and the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats either lead or are seven points or less behind in 43.

If the polls are correct, the Conservatives will suffer a cataclysmic defeat on 4 July. There are several similarities between the difficulties they confront and the PC’s dire situation in 1993. However, as dim as the prospects are for the Tories, they are unlikely to suffer an electoral rout on the same scale due to the much more territorialised nature of the Canadian party system. In the 1993 Canadian election, regional issues were highly salient, and whereas the PC vote share was geographically diffuse and highly inefficient, two of their main competitors benefitted from having regionally concentrated support.

Table 1: Percentage of popular vote by province and territory (seats in parenthesis)

Province/Territory	Liberal	Bloc Quebecois	Reform	NDP	PC
Alberta	25 (4)	_	52 (22)	4 (0)	15 (0)
British Columbia	28 (6)	_	36 (24)	14 (2)	14 (0)
Manitoba	45 (13)		22 (1)	17 (1)	12 (0)
New Brunswick	56 (9)	_	8	5	28 (1)
Newfoundland	67 (7)	_	1 (0)	4 (0)	27 (0)
Northwest Territories	65 (2)	_	8 (0)	8 (0)	16 (0)
Nova Scotia	52 (11)	_	13 (0)	7 (0)	24 (0)
Ontario	53 (98)	_	20 (1)	6 (0)	18 (0)
Quebec	33 (19)	49 (54)	_	2	14 (1)
Prince Edward Island	60 (4)	_	1 (0)	7 (0)	24 (0)
Saskatchewan	32 (5)	_	27 (4)	11 (5)	11 (0)
Yukon Territory	23 (0)	_	13 (0)	43 (1)	18 (0)

By Dr Zain Mohyuddin, researcher, UK in a Changing Europe.

A version of this piece also featured on Politics Home.

* A widely used measure of the efficiency of converting votes to seats is calculated by dividing the percentage of seats won by the popular vote received. This creates an index which ranges from zero to infinity with higher values indicating a more efficient vote to seat translation. In 1993, the PCs “efficiency index” was 0.04. Assuming the Conservatives win 22 percent of the national vote and 140 seats, as predicted by the YouGov MRP, their “efficiency index” would be 1.

** According to the 1993 Canadian Election Study, 54% of self-identified Conservatives said their party attachment was either “Very Strong” or “Fairly Strong.” The corresponding figure among British Conservatives was 65%.

 

Just how extreme is Nigel Farage's Reform UK?

Copyright Ben Birchall/PA via AP

By Andrew Naughtie

Published on 19/06/2024 -

A string of embarrassments involving under-vetted candidates has raised red flags about an insurgent force in the UK election, led by Brexit activist and former MEP Nigel Farage.

With just two weeks to go until a snap general election, Britain’s ruling Conservative Party looks set to face what could be its biggest defeat in more than a century.

While the Labour Party is expected to win a landslide victory, much of the credit for the Conservatives’ downfall will be due to an insurgent party to their right.

According to the polls, the anti-immigration, anti-”woke” and culturally traditionalist party Reform UK, led by leading Brexit activist and former MEP Nigel Farage, is set to take as much as 15% or more of the national vote. One poll that showed it leading the Tories by a single point received wall-to-wall coverage, though the lead was within the margin of error.

Farage himself is now running to become an MP for the seat of Clacton, an area that has received national attention mainly for its voters' intensely pro-Brexit views and its atmosphere of economic depression.

It will be Farage’s eighth attempt to get into parliament, and for the first time, he is widely expected to win.

So who are the voters he is trying to win over?

Reform’s pitch appears squarely aimed at a stereotypical older right-wing voter — but according to Paula Surridge, Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol, the slice of the electorate currently backing the party straddles the left-right divide more than many commentators acknowledge. 

“The voters Reform have been winning from the Conservatives are most distinctive in terms of having immigration as their core concern,” she told Euronews. “They are particularly hardline on illegal immigration and the 'small boats'."

“In terms of values they are a little more socially conservative than those who have been staying loyal to the Conservatives, but notably more economically left-leaning — something a little out of tune with the party rhetoric and manifesto.”

That manifesto, branded by Reform as a “Contract with You”, is heavily focused on trying to cut taxes and turbo-charge economic growth.

It contains various measures that appear designed to appeal to wealthier voters, among them an extravagant commitment to lift the inheritance tax threshold so that estates worth less than £2 million (€2.36m) are exempted.

The fiscal element of the so-called contract was shredded in an analysis by the independent Institute of Fiscal Studies, which concluded that “even with the extremely optimistic assumptions about how much economic growth would increase, the sums in this manifesto do not add up.”

'Reclaiming Britain': All-out culture war assault

But if these plans sit at odds with many potential Reform voters’ economic views, the manifesto’s other policies are a laundry list of the hardline right’s favourite topics.

Aside from a strident plan to freeze non-essential immigration and impose a punitive levy on businesses that employ “foreign workers”, the contract also pushes for the end of what it calls “woke policing” and a philosophical cleanup of British education.

It would force schools to “ban transgender ideology” while enforcing a “patriotic” model of education, declaring that “any teaching about a period or example of British or European imperialism or slavery must be paired with the teaching of a non-European occurrence of the same to ensure balance.”

The national identity theme even gets its own full page, titled “Reclaiming Britain”, a section that nods towards post-COVID-19 paranoia about the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum, and the declining use of cash currency.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks onboard the Reform UK campaign bus in Barnsley, England.Danny Lawson/PA

Alongside proposing two new national holidays to celebrate Welsh and English identity, the manifesto declares it would launch an all-out culture war assault.

“Legislate to stop left-wing bias and politically correct ideology that threatens personal freedom and democracy,” it reads. “No more de-banking, cancel culture, left wing hate mobs or political bias in public institutions. Stop Sharia law being used in the UK.” (Sharia law is not used in the British legal system.)

This, then, is what the party says it wants. But just as telling are the people it has chosen to represent it.

Into the fray, beyond the fringe

Many of Reform UK’s 600-plus candidates were selected in a rush when the snap election was called by Rishi Sunak. This left the party with little time to vet them for problematic past statements, and the results have not been good.

One candidate, Ian Gribbin, was forced to apologise after the resurfacing of old posts on a right-wing news site in which he wrote that it would have been “far better” for the UK to have stayed out of World War II.

“Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality ... but oh no, Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people,” one of the posts read.

He also referred to women as the “sponging gender” and suggested they should be deprived of medical care until the life expectancy gap between the sexes could be closed. He remains Reform UK’s candidate for the seat of Bexhill and Battle.

Another candidate, Jack Aaron, has had to defend comments in which he described Hitler as a “brilliant” man according to “Socionics”, a fringe pseudoscientific theory of personality types. Again, he remains a candidate.

One Reform candidate who has actually stood down is Grant StClair-Armstrong, who, it was revealed, had previously urged readers to vote for the openly racist British National Party.

Apologising for his comments, which Reform itself condemned as “unacceptable”, StClair-Amstrong was insistent that: “I am not a racist in any shape or form, outspoken maybe. I have many Muslim friends, three of whom refer to me as Daddy.” Politico reported that he did not appear to be discussing his children.

Farage and his de facto co-leader, Richard Tice, have blamed these incidents on the supposed failures of a third-party vetting contractor, against whom they say they are considering legal action. However, it has transpired that the party, in fact, used Vetting.com, which is not a vetting agency but an automated paid-for platform to which users can upload information themselves.

Nonetheless, Farage has suggested an establishment “stitch-up” may be to blame.

But aside from the plethora of candidates that Reform insists it did not have time to vet properly, there is the matter of what Farage himself has said since the campaign began. 

When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak left a D-Day commemoration ceremony early, shocking his allies and outraging much of the nation, Farage used an interview to complain that the UK’s first premier of Asian descent “doesn’t understand our history and our culture”.

Called out for his remarks on air by a BBC interviewer, Farage insisted his point was that Sunak is “utterly disconnected by class, by privilege, from how the ordinary folk in this country feel”.

Farage as the wrecking ball (again)

The extent to which all of this matters depends largely on the result Reform get on 4 July — and on what Farage does next. 

According to the polls, Reform is set to take as much as 15% or more of the national vote. One poll that showed it leading the Tories by a single point received wall-to-wall coverage, but the lead was within the survey’s margin of error.

Yet this polling surge may not directly translate into any meaningful number of seats.

Under the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, a party’s national share of the vote is essentially irrelevant. Instead, each seat is represented by the candidate who wins the most votes within the constituency, however small their share might be.

This does not seem to bother Farage, who originally claimed he was not planning to run at all. His entrance into the fray has boosted his party, and he is increasingly open about his goal of destroying the Conservative Party in its current form.

Depending on how reduced that party is in size after 4 July and who leads it into its years out of power, he may yet be admitted to its ranks himself.

And if he makes it through to a leadership contest, the grassroots party members who make the final decision might well give him a chance to run the show.

Euronews contacted Reform UK for comment, but the party did not respond at the time of publication.

UK Politics

Billionaire Tory donor John Caudwell switches allegiance to Labour

HE WILL GET ALONG SPLENDIDLY WITH SIR KEIR; THE RED TORY

John Caudwell had given Boris Johnson £500k to take on Jeremy Corbyn

Barney Davis
INDEPENDENT UK

JUNE 18,2024

Phones4u founder John Caudwell (PA)

The billionaire founder of Phones4U who donated £500,000 to the Tory party in 2019 has switched his support to Labour in a fresh blow to Rishi Sunak’s stuttering election campaign.

John Caudwell has said he will be voting for Labour citing his amazement at Sir Keir Starmer’s transformation of the party.

Mr Cauldwell was one of the biggest donors to the Tories ahead of the 2019 general election, when he gave half a million pounds to Boris Johnson’s campaign.

Encouraging everybody to vote for Labour, Mr Caudwell said he was “amazed by how Keir Starmer brought it back from that Corbyn brink.”

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (PA Archive)

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he was “delighted” that Mr Caudwell had “thrown his support behind the changed Labour Party”.

He said: “The message is clear: business backs change and economic stability with Labour, and rejects five more years of chaos and decline with the Tories.

“John was not just a Conservative voter but a substantial donor to the Conservative Party in 2019 – so it’s not a decision that he will have taken lightly.

“But it’s clear that he shares my plan for growth that I set out in the Labour manifesto.

“I’m campaigning non stop between now and 4 July to win the votes of other people who have backed the Tories in the past but see change with Labour as the best future for Britain.”

Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are heading for a record defeat on July 4, according to a mammoth poll from Ipsos (PA Wire)

Mr Caudwell said he had supported the Conservatives for 51 years but had been “despairing” about their performance for many years.

He said: “Only five years ago, I donated half a million to the Conservatives to help avert the disaster that would have been Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.

“But I’ve been increasingly critical of Tory failures since then, particularly over Rishi’s mismanagement of the economy during Covid, Boris’ lowering of ethical standards and, of course, associated with that the accusation that Tory cronies benefited improperly regarding Covid PPE – and then the Liz Truss debacle.


“Over the last two years especially, I have been amazed by how Keir Starmer has transformed the Labour Party and brought it back from that Corbyn brink.

“As I have always said, the Government must be much more commercially minded to grow GDP in order to finance the public services that benefit all of society without increasing taxes.

“When Labour launched its manifesto last Thursday, I was delighted to see that accelerating economic growth was front and centre, and that projected growth is clearly tied into making Britain a clean energy superpower.

“So, I can declare publicly that I will vote for Labour, and I encourage everybody to do the same.

“We need a very strong Labour government that can take extremely bold decisions and you can rest assured that I will be doing my best to influence them wherever I can, in putting the great back in Britain.”

The setback came as Rishi Sunak was warned he is “fighting the wrong campaign” after placing his hopes on Boris Johnson stave off an election meltdown.

Flock of sheep flee as Rishi Sunak and David Cameron try to feed them. 

(Ben Birchall/PA Wire)

The prime minister today took a trip to southwest England in a bid to rescue seats from a pincer movement by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on the right and Labour and the Liberal Democrats on the left.

But as Mr Sunak was openly mocked by his rivals amid images of him speaking on hay bales and sheep running away when he tried to feed them, former chancellor George Osborne, who ran the winning election campaigns in 2010 and 2015, heaped criticism on the beleaguered prime minister.

Osborne said: “He should be trying to defend his blue wall seats which is where Labour are now running riot rather than focusing on the red wall seats that Boris Johnson won five years ago when, by the way, the Labour candidate was Jeremy Corbyn so it was a completely different election from having Sir Keir Starmer.”

In a bad day for Mr Sunak, two more polls delivered further bad news with Savanta finding that only one in five voters (21 per cent) believe his promises on reducing immigration, with 27 per cent thinking Labour were more likely to stop the boats.

Labour and Tories both offering more austerity for the NHS, finds Nuffield Trust


Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting meet patients and staff at Bassetlaw Hospital in Nottinghamshire to discuss Labour's plan to reduce NHS waiting lists if they get into power after the forthcoming General Election on July 4, June 15, 2024


ANDREW MURRAY 

MORNINGSTAR

SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 2024

BOTH Labour and Tories are offering new austerity for the National Health Service if they win the general election — only worse, research shows.

Independent health think tank Nuffield Trust has scrutinised both parties’ pledges on the NHS.

It believes both parties, because of their rigid fiscal plans, will leave the NHS in crisis with lower increases in spending than those imposed by the Tories and Liberal Democrats at the height of austerity.

The trust says this will mean a squeeze on staff costs and make it impossible to meet pay increases planned for junior doctors and others.

It estimates that over the next parliament, the Tories will increase health spending by 0.9 per cent a year, and Labour by just 1.1 per cent.

These parsimonious plans, the trust argues, “would make the next few years the tightest period of funding in NHS history” whoever wins on July 4 and render “the dramatic recovery all are promising” inconceivable.

The revelation came as shadow health secretary Wes Streeting called on junior doctors to call off planned strikes and pledged he would start resolving the dispute on his first day in office.

He said he was “beyond furious” that the dispute was continuing although he also conceded that he would have liked a “more ambitious” social care policy in Labour’s manifesto, an indication of the tensions roiling even the party’s right over its paper-thin prospectus.

Mr Streeting called on voters not to give “matches back to the arsonist to finish the job,” as he suggested a Conservative election victory would be a “nightmare on Downing Street.”

It is a nightmare that the country looks unlikely to sign up for since Tory Party support is now at its lowest-ever level in opinion polling history.

Indeed, it is now in a fight to maintain itself in second place as the Reform Party has gained ground since the announcement that Nigel Farage had reappointed himself leader.

Top pundit John Curtice said that “every poll has reported a fall in Conservative support and nearly all the narrowing of the Conservative lead over Reform.

“So, what last week was an average eight point Conservative lead over Reform has now halved to just four points — and standing at just 20 per cent, Conservative support is now at its lowest ever in British polling history,” he added.

Backing for Labour is also drifting downwards, as some voters move towards the Greens and others may be attracted by Reform, particularly in the fabled “red wall” ex-industrial seats.

Reform chairman Richard Tice took aim at such voters today, claiming that “Reform is the real party of the workers, who have been abandoned by ‘café latte’ Labour.”

His proprietor, Mr Farage, worked the Conservative side of the field, saying right-wing Tories “are just in the wrong party” and predicting that turmoil within the Conservatives would only get worse with the hard right rebelling.

Trying to counter the Farage surge, former Tory minister and hard right leadership aspirant Robert Jenrick claimed that while he “sympathised with the frustrations” of voters attracted to Reform, failing to vote Tory could lead to an “elective dictatorship” by Labour.

Labour maintains a 17-point lead over the Conservatives in the latest poll, on 40 per cent to the Tories’ 23, with Reform up to 14 per cent.

Other surveys have put Reform level with or even ahead of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s party, although it is unlikely to win nearly as many seats.

But the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg said Reform’s “influence could yet prove dramatic and deadly for the Tories.”

Mr Curtice, with studied understatement, said that Mr Sunak “must be beginning to doubt his decision to call the election early.”

Nigel Farage demands spot on BBC's Question Time live election debate

Farage was speaking after a youGov poll put Reform ahead of the Tories for the first time.

Stuart Henderson
Updated Fri, 14 June 2024 

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at The Wellington, in central London, on Friday. (PA)


Nigel Farage has demanded a slot on the BBC's Question Time election debate next week.

The Reform UK leader told a press conference on Friday that one recent poll - which put his party just ahead of the Conservatives for the first time - meant he should share a platform on the BBC's four-way leaders' special on 20 June.

“I think we can demand of right now that the BBC put us into that debate,” he said. "I would also very much like to do a debate head-to-head with Keir Starmer and the reason’s very simple – we think this should be the immigration election.”


Farage also labelled himself “leader of the opposition” during the press conference, held in central London. He also predicted his party would get six million votes. That total would be significantly more than the 3.9 million votes his former party, Ukip, received under his leadership in 2015 when it secured 12.6% of the vote.

Read more: Will Nigel Farage's Reform UK 'beat' the Tories in the election?

The debate next week, hosted by Fiona Bruce, is currently scheduled to include representatives of the UK’s four largest parties: the Conservatives, Labour Party, SNP and Liberal Democrats.

The shock YouGov poll released on Thursday night showed support for Reform at 19%, just ahead of the Tories on 18%.


And while the results of the poll were certainly newsworthy, it is the only poll to date to have Reform ahead of Rishi Sunak's party.

According to the PA news agency, an average of all polls carried out wholly or partly during the seven days to 13 June puts Labour on 43%, 21 points ahead of the Conservatives on 22%, followed by Reform on 14%, the Lib Dems on 10% and the Greens on 6%.

(PA)

That means Reform’s average is up one percentage point on the previous week while the Tories are down one point.

And while Reform may be polling higher numbers than the Lib Dems, the UK's first-past-the-post voting system means it is highly unlikely Farage's party will get anywhere near the number of seats being targetted by Ed Davey.

The latest prediction based on opinion polls from 05 Jun 2024 to 13 Jun 2024, sampling 19,426 people. (Electoral Calculus)

According to polling experts Electoral Calculus, The Conservatives are projected to win between 42 and 236 seats, the Lib Dems between 34-77 seats, the SNP between 20-38 and Reform way back, with an expected one seat and a possible high of seven.

However, it is clear that Reform UK has continued the renewed momentum sparked when Farage announced he was taking over as leader and would stand for election in the Essex seat of Clacton on 4 June.

An 'utter disaster' for the Tories

The continued rise of the Reform UK is also marked it could potentially spell election disaster for the Conservatives, one of the UK's leading election experts warned in the wake of the YouGov poll.

Polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice said Reform's growing support was a "real, real problem for the Conservatives" because nearly all the voters shifting their support were switching from those who had previously backed the Tories in 2019.

“Any chance the Conservatives ever had when they fired the starting gun on May 22 that they might be able to narrow Labour’s lead was predicated on them being able to win back those Reform voters.

“Their failure already to squeeze the Reform vote before Farage entered was itself bad news, and then Farage has boosted it further and made things even worse.

Prof Curtice said the average of recent polls shows backing for Reform at about 15% or 16%, was an “utter disaster for the Conservatives”.

Sunak insisted that voting for Reform UK would be “handing Labour a blank cheque” as he played down the YouGov survey.

But in Friday's press conference, Farage claimed his party was "well ahead" of the Conservatives in several regions including the North East, the North West, the East Midlands, in the West Midlands, as well as in the so-called red wall. Adding to this he said: "The inflection point means that, actually, if you vote Conservative in the red wall, you will almost certainly get Labour. A Conservative vote in the red wall is now a wasted vote."

Why Reform will struggle to win any seats – despite beating the Tories in the polls

Ollie Corfe

THE TELEGRAPH
Fri, 14 June 2024 




One week ago, Nigel Farage voiced his goal for Reform to overtake the Conservatives in the polls.

On Thursday, a YouGov poll said he had finally achieved it, surpassing the Tories by one point.

The poll has Reform on a national vote share of 19 points, with the Conservatives trailing on 18. Labour continues to be way ahead on 37 points.

It is important to note this is just one poll: across 12 pollsters’ latest polls, Reform are averaging on 14 per cent, compared to the Conservatives on 22 per cent.

Reform has seen a jump in support – around 3 to 4 per cent since the election was called.

Despite this, very few experts, including the party itself, predict it will secure more than a handful of seats.

This is because, unlike a party like the Liberal Democrats, support for Reform is spread evenly across the country rather than being concentrated in a small number of seats. So while it can score high in nationwide polls, it may not be able to secure enough support in individual seats to claim success – especially given the UK’s first past the post electoral system.
Are Reform on course to win seats in Parliament?

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Friday, Mr Farage said: “Whatever we do, we may not get the number of seats we deserve, but are we going to win seats in Parliament? Yes.”

The latest YouGov MRP – which polls voting intention in each constituency, surveying some 50,000 people in total – conducted just before Mr Farage took control of the party, had the party on no seats whatsoever.

However, Mr Farage is clearly optimistic that the recent surge in the polls since his return to the helm of Reform will result in the party sending MPs to Westminster.

Hypothetically, Reform will need a much larger percentage of the vote than has been seen so far for his party to secure more than a couple of seats.
What constituency swing is needed?

This latest MRP, which uses modelling and constituency-level polling to predict individual seat outcomes, had Labour on 422 MPs to the Conservatives 140 MPs.

On average, across all the seats, Reform secured 10.2 per cent of the vote share in the survey. This left it in second place in 27 seats, but the winner in none.

In a situation where, uniformly across all seats, each vote gained by Reform was stolen solely from the Conservatives, the party would need to see its share increase by 12 points before it started picking up seats.

This is because in the seats where Reform comes second, it is Labour that stands in the way, not the Conservatives and, even where it is in second, it is substantially behind the projected winner.

For example, YouGov’s MRP has support for Reform at its strongest in Barnsley North, at 23 per cent to the Tories’ 7 per cent. If every Conservative voter abandoned the party and threw their weight behind Reform, its share would rise to 30 per cent. It would still lose to Labour, polling there at 48 per cent.

If there was a uniform 12-point swing to Reform in every seat from current polling levels, Reform would return three MPs: Mr Farage in Clacton, Richard Tice in Boston and Skegness and a third in New Forest East.

It would not be until a 15-point swing from the Tories to Reform that it would secure over 10 seats. And a massive 19-point swing would be needed to get them above the Lib Dems, in which case the Conservative party would be left without a single seat.

In a second scenario, where for every two votes Reform steals from the Conservatives, it takes one from Labour, Reform getting an MP elected is more within reach.

In this scenario, Reform gets its first and only seat with an 11-point swing. Interestingly, its first winner isn’t the party leader, but Garry Sutherland in Exmouth and Exeter East.

Lee Anderson would join the Reform victors with a 12-point swing, Mr Farage and Mr Tice after a 14-point swing, and a 17-point swing would see them become the second party on 81 seats.
Why is it so difficult?

The bar for becoming a major political party is incredibly high.

This is almost entirely explained by the first-past-the-post system, where parties are punished if their support is distributed widely instead of focused in a small number of seats.

For Reform voters, one point of contention will likely be that the Liberal Democrats, currently trailing them nationwide on 10 per cent of voting intention, are predicted by the YouGov MRP to secure 48 seats.

Crucially, this Liberal Democrat vote share is extremely focused in some areas.

The Liberal Democrats are projected to gain less than 10 per cent of the total vote share in around three quarters of seats across the country. Reform on the other hand is predicted to experience vote share this low in fewer than half of seats.

However, the Lib Dems could see shares of over 30 per cent in around 11 per cent of all seats. Reform is not expected to see this anywhere.

Effectively, this means that while Reform has a more uniform level of middling vote share across seats, the Liberal Democrats experience very high support and very low support.

This feeling is not unique to Reform.

The Greens could have its vote share triple this year and even become the second party with younger parties, but are still only projected to pick up Brighton Pavillion and – maybe – Bristol Central.

Reform UK: Where did party come from and what are its policies?

Sophie Wingate and Ian Jones, PA
Fri, 14 June 2024 

With a major poll showing Reform UK edging past the Conservatives for the first time, Nigel Farage’s party has the potential to blow up the General Election.

Here the PA news agency answers some key questions on the party.

– Where did Reform UK come from?

It was formed in 2021 as a relaunch of Mr Farage’s previous project, the Brexit Party, which had in turn been founded from the remnants of Ukip.




Mr Farage helped found Ukip in the 1990s, which in later decades ate away at Tory support and proved instrumental in paving the way for the in-out referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.

In the aftermath of Brexit, Mr Farage announced he was quitting for a third time as Ukip leader. As the party descended into infighting, amid claims of a sharp turn to the right, he dramatically announced he was returning to the political front line with the formation of the new Brexit Party.

Mr Farage and Richard Tice in 2020 announced the Brexit Party would be renamed Reform as they railed against Covid-19 lockdowns. Unusually, it was set up as an “entrepreneurial political start-up”, with Mr Farage the company’s majority shareholder and honorary president.

Reform remained relatively unknown until recently, despite a major boost with the defection of Tory party deputy chairman Lee Anderson earlier this year.

Lee Anderson defected to Reform while he was the MP for Ashfield (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Mr Anderson became the party’s first MP following his suspension from the Conservative Party over comments he made about London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

– What happened when the General Election was called?

After Rishi Sunak called the General Election, Mr Farage at first announced he would not stand as a Reform UK candidate, saying he would support his party from the sidelines while focusing on getting Donald Trump re-elected as US president.

But less than two weeks later, he performed a screeching U-turn. Not only would he seek to become the MP for Clacton, but he would do so as leader of Reform UK, replacing former businessman and MEP Mr Tice in the role.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage holding a McDonald’s banana milkshake after one was thrown at him in Essex (James Manning/PA)

Mr Farage, who has failed in his previous seven attempts to be elected to the Commons, said his decision was motivated by a “terrible sense of guilt” towards his supporters as he vowed to lead a “political revolt”.

His takeover came as a huge blow to Mr Sunak’s already faltering campaign, heightening Tory fears that Reform could snatch voters from the right.

Following the veteran Eurosceptic’s decision to stand, celebrated with great fanfare by party backers in the Essex seat he is hoping to win, Reform began to climb in the polls.



– What are Reform’s policies?

The party will fight the election on immigration, pledging an “employer immigration tax” on companies that choose to employ overseas workers instead of British citizens.

This would see businesses paying a national insurance “premium” of 20% of an employee’s salary, as opposed to 13.8%, if the worker is from overseas.

The party has vowed to freeze lawful immigration with the exception of healthcare and leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

On the economy, Reform has set out an ambition to slash £91 billion off public spending by stopping the Bank of England paying interest on quantitative easing reserves and finding £50 billion of wasteful spending in Whitehall.

It has promised there would be no tax on earnings under £20,000 a year.

Reform has also said it would abolish the Government’s net zero targets and “stand up for British culture, identity and values”.

The party is set to unveil its full manifesto on Monday June 17.



– How have Reform’s poll ratings changed since the campaign began?

On the day Mr Sunak called the election, Reform was averaging 11% in the opinion polls.

The party remained around this level until the first week of June, when – a few days after Mr Farage announced he was standing as a candidate – its average poll rating began to climb and currently stands at 15%, six points behind the Conservatives’ average of 21%.

While most polls published in the past two weeks show a clear rise in support for Reform, there is no agreement among them over how the party is faring in relation to the Conservatives.

Only one poll so far has put Reform ahead of the Tories. The YouGov poll put Reform at 19% to the Tories’ 18% in voting intention, although pollsters caveated that Reform’s lead is within the margin of error.

Five other polls have been published in the past 24 hours, all of which show Reform trailing the Conservatives between one percentage point (Redfield & Wilton) and 12 points (More in Common).

– So what are Reform’s chances in the election?

Mr Farage has been bullish about Reform’s chances, expressing hope the party can “get through the electoral threshold” while declining to put a target on the number of seats he believes it could win.

But the first-past-the-post electoral system means the party could gain millions of votes without taking a single constituency.

Nigel Farage and Richard Tice announcing their party’s economic policy (James Manning/PA)

Nonetheless, Reform could have a big impact on the result by taking votes away from the Conservatives and costing Tory candidates closely contested seats.

Mr Farage’s stated ambition is to engineer a reverse takeover of the Conservative Party to form a new centre-right grouping.

He has hinted at the possibility of striking an election deal with the Tories, although Mr Tice dismissed the comments as “banter”.

In 2019, the then-Brexit Party withdrew candidates in seats across the country in a bid to help then-Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson win.

What does Reform UK stand for? Their history and vision under Nigel Farage

Dominic Penna

THE TELEGRAPH
Fri, 14 June 2024 

Since rebranding itself in 2020, Reform UK has become a formidable force on the political scene

Founded in 2021 as a relaunch of the Brexit Party, Reform UK stands almost neck and neck with the Conservatives in the wake of Nigel Farage shock announcement that he will stand as an MP and the party’s leader.

They are on track to cost the Conservatives a significant proportion of voters from the political Right ahead of the looming general election on July 4, edging one point ahead of the Prime Minister’s party for the first time in the latest figures from YouGov.

Already, the party has faced pivotal change throughout their campaign with co-founder Mr Farage returning to front-line politics to lead a “political revolt” aimed at toppling the Conservative Party after replacing Richard Tice, a former businessman and MEP who has led the party since 2021.

His pledge came as a surprise to most given Mr Farage had previously ruled out standing in the general election in his first campaign speech on May 23, promising to support Mr Tice from the sidelines instead.

Reform gained its first MP in March after Lee Anderson, a former deputy chairman of the Tory Party, defected following his suspension over a row about Sadiq Khan.

Mr Tice and Mr Farage announced the Brexit Party would become Reform on Nov 1 2020 in an article for The Telegraph published at the start of the second Covid lockdown.

They used the joint article to declare “lockdowns don’t work” and instead advocated a policy of “focused protection” for the most vulnerable. They also called for sweeping reform of major institutions beyond the pandemic.

Reform stood candidates at the London Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Senedd elections in 2021. Though failing to pick up any seats, the party gathered just over 42,500 supporters across all three elections.

The same year it won two council seats in the local elections, both in Derby.

Reform UK polls

The party’s backing in the polls remained largely static throughout 2021, averaging around three percentage points, although it had risen to an average of 6 per cent by the end of 2022 amid growing public frustration with the Conservative Party in the wake of the deposition of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.


The party’s fortunes improved vastly during 2023 and the early months of 2024, with average support for Reform almost doubling from 6 per cent in January 2023 to 10.1 per cent at the start of March.

The rise of Reform can be attributed to a combination of the party’s policy offer and fortuitous circumstances.
Reform UK policies

On the economic front, it has promised sweeping cuts to levies including corporation tax and inheritance tax at a time when Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are overseeing the country’s highest tax burden since the Second World War, with a further peak projected later this decade.

Despite successive Conservative governments promising to cut immigration, net migration reached record levels in 2022 and previous Reform leader Mr Tice has cited this “betrayal” by the Tory government of its past manifesto pledges as a driving force behind his party’s success.

Research from the More in Common think tank in February 2022 found that immigration was the main reason 2019 Tory voters were defecting to Reform, with around one in five of those who backed Boris Johnson and his party at the last election expected to support Mr Farage.

Reform’s promises on border control include “net zero immigration”, leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – a demand made by many Tory backbenchers, and a popular idea among the party’s grassroots – and declaring illegal immigration as a national security threat.

On May 30, the party announced plans to introduce a migrant tax that would force employers to pay a higher National Insurance (NI) rate on foreign workers.

Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Tice pledged a 20 per cent National Insurance rate for every foreign worker in comparison to the current 13.8 per cent for domestic British workers.

The party has also vowed to abolish the Government’s flagship net zero targets, claiming that the green push is doing more damage to the British economy than anything else.

There was a further bounce in support for Reform following Mr Sunak’s November reshuffle, in which Suella Braverman was sacked as Home Secretary over her criticism of pro-Palestinian protests, which she dubbed “hate marches”.

The same reshuffle took Westminster by surprise with the return of Lord Cameron as the new Foreign Secretary, a move that angered many on the Tory Right as the former prime minister is widely perceived to be on the liberal wing of the party.

Mr Tice told GB News at the time: “The truth is our server has almost exploded with fury at what’s happened today with the return of David Cameron. Let’s remember this is the gentleman who campaigned against Brexit, and almost everything he did on foreign policy was wrong.”

As a result of its outflanking of the Conservatives on the Right in many policy areas and channelling the disillusionment of traditional Tories with its rhetoric, the party may well have an even greater impact at the next general election than in 2019, when it stood aside from seats held by Mr Johnson’s Tory candidates.

Now commanding the support of around one in ten voters, the party could block Mr Sunak from winning in dozens of seats he may otherwise retain.