THE UK is facing “unprecedented” political circumstances as voters turn away from both Labour and the Tories, polling expert Professor John Curtice has said.
It comes after a new UK-wide poll of more than 16,000 people – analysed using the MRP (multilevel regression and post-stratification) method – predicted Reform UK were set to return more MPs than either of the UK’s traditional two biggest parties.
The More in Common survey projected that Nigel Farage’s Reform would win 180 seats at Westminster, while Labour and the Tories returned 165 MPs each. All three parties polled at 24% vote share. The SNP polled at 2% UK-wide, which the MRP analysis suggested would lead to returning 35 MPs.
While no party would be close to a majority (326 MPs are needed), Reform and the Tories could set up a governing agreement together which would likely put Farage into No 10 – as First Minister John Swinney warned was looking probable last week.
Writing in The Mirror on Monday, Professor Curtice said that Farage’s party could be set to “win hundreds of seats” in the local elections in England on May 1 as the UK faced “unprecedented circumstances”.
A total of 1641 English council seats will be up for grabs in the ballots next Thursday, as well the Runcorn and Helsby seat at Westminster – which was left vacant when former Labour MP Mike Amesbury quit after being videoed punching a man on the street.
The professor said that since then there has been a “remarkable transformation in the parties’ standings in the polls”.
Curtice wrote: “Never before have both Labour, whose current average poll rating is just 24%, and the Conservatives, on 22%, been so unpopular at the same time. Both are struggling to keep pace with Reform, narrowly ahead on 25%.
“British politics was once a two-horse race between Conservative and Labour. Now it is a fragmented five-way battle. Even the Greens (9%) are at a record high in the polls, while the Liberal Democrats (14%) are a force once more.”
The professor said that, in the English elections, the Tories had the most to lose and Reform potentially the most to gain.
However, he said that the General Election had seen support for Farage’s party “spread too thinly across the country” to win many seats. A repeat situation could help the LibDems or Labour, Curtice said, by taking votes from the Tories in traditionally blue areas.
He went on: “However, although the thinly spread nature of Reform UK’s vote was a disadvantage last year, that may not be [the] case this year. Ahead in the national polls rather than third, the party may have just enough support to win hundreds of seats from the Conservatives, albeit mostly on narrow majorities.
“The party certainly has its eyes on big gains in Lincolnshire, the most Eurosceptic county in the country. But it will be hoping – and its opponents fearing – that it can do much more than that.”
On Wednesday in Scotland, First Minister Swinney will convene a meeting of civil society and Holyrood parties in a bid to explore how the far right can be held off in Scottish politics.
