January 26, 2025 - 8:00am

With all eyes on Washington this week, a clutch of British opinion polls haven’t received the attention they deserve. But the picture they paint is extraordinary. It’s basically a three-way tie between Labour, the Tories and Reform UK — each on about a quarter of the vote.

The precise order varies from pollster to pollster. Labour is ahead with YouGov and JL Partners, but trails with More in Common and Find Out Now. It’s all so close that first, second and third place is much less important than the fact that Labour is down substantially on its general election performance, Reform substantially up, and the Tories stuck where they were.

Of course, the next general election probably won’t be until 2028 or 2029, so Labour has years to rescue itself. That, however, assumes that the conventional view of British political dynamics is correct — i.e. that the polls depend on the success or failure of the governing party. If so, the current three-way split in the polls is a temporary aberration. With Keir Starmer’s government yet to get its act together and the official Opposition still reeling after a landslide defeat, Reform is merely filling the vacuum.

But what if the three-way split is the new normal? In fact, what if it’s been the natural state of British politics for at least a decade? This would be in line with politics on the continent, where electorates are typically split three ways between the Left, the centre-right and the populist Right. The only reason why this pattern hasn’t been more obvious in the UK is that our electoral system tends to destabilise protest parties, leaving populist voters drifting and homeless.

But not anymore. Reform UK is a more professional operation than Ukip ever was. What’s more, with about a quarter of the vote, it has reached a critical mass at which a protest vote is no longer a wasted vote, but one that can get a substantial number of MPs elected.

Rather than being transitory, it’s plausible that the current distribution of support between the parties represents a new and stable equilibrium. If that’s the case, then Labour is stuck in a deeper hole than it thinks. The same would be true of the Conservatives, of course, but they already know what life is like on a low vote share. In addition, they suffered their crushing defeat after 14 years in government. That meant that many of their top people were at the end of their political careers — or, like David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson, already out.

But if Labour is heading for a similar fate, then many of its champions will be cut down in their prime. Wes Streeting and Jess Phillips are both in vulnerable seats. In their cases, Muslim independents are the main threat, but Reform poses the greater danger. According to one projection, a populist surge could sweep away Cabinet ministers John Healey, Bridget Phillipson, Lisa Nandy and Pat McFadden. Even Angela Rayner isn’t safe.

Labour faces a struggle not to be kicked out after just four or five years in power, having not faced that sort of humiliation since 1979. The ensuing trauma almost destroyed the party in the early Eighties, and Labour may not survive it today.


Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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