Is Reform really on course to win a majority at the next election?

A “mega poll” by YouGov suggests Reform UK would almost certainly form a government if a general election was held now. It puts Nigel Farage’s party just short of an overall Commons majority.

YouGov’s result is arrived at by using a large-sample “MRP” poll, adding statistical techniques of multilevel regression and post-stratification to census and other data to model and predict the outcome in each constituency – and then tot up the numbers. Broadly, it tells us what we know already – that Reform is popular right now and that Westminster’s old two-party system is looking broken.

It has caused a stir, not least because it suggests cabinet ministers and other big beasts including Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper, Wes Streeting, Pat McFadden, Jeremy Hunt, Mel Stride, James Cleverly and Suella Braverman would all be out.

But there are also reasons to calm down…

No.

The MRP crystallises dramatically the current state of public opinion and shows how extraordinary the 2028 or 2029 general election might be – more than “watershed” elections that took place in 1945, 1979 and, arguably, 1997.

The traditional party system might then be over, with a radical nationalist Reform government set on profound constitutional change and the Liberal Democrats becoming the main opposition party. The YouGov poll is also a reminder of the scale of challenge facing Labour and the Tories in next year’s elections in Scotland, Wales, London and elsewhere. But yes, we’re still suffering a bit of election fever even though it was 14 months ago.

No. Many of its notional seats in this poll are gained on tiny margins, so even a modest Labour or Conservative revival would push them some distance from a viable minority government. And all of Farage’s previous parties – Ukip and Brexit Party – have proved prone to splits and mayhem. Reform is presently benefiting from an unusual situation in which both main parties are extremely unpopular and the Liberal Democrats have ceased to be the protest party of choice. There’s no reason why this situation will necessarily last until the next general election – and don’t forget this is the party that wants to renegotiate Brexit.

A more intriguing possibility would be if the only way a majority government could be formed was through a Labour-Conservative “grand coalition”, keeping Farage out.

Of course, as history shows; the Labour government led by Harold Wilson and re-elected in 1966 on a landslide soon ran into severe economic difficulties, leadership speculation and disastrous polling and by-elections. By the time of the 1970 election, it had recovered by almost enough to win a third term. The Thatcher administration of 1979-83, marked by mass unemployment, went through a similar cycle but won decisively. Boris Johnson took a Tory party that recorded 9 per cent in the June 2019 European elections and converted it into a stonking victory in the December 2019 “Brexit” general election.

That said, John Major (1992-97) and Rishi Sunak (2022-24) never managed to raise their parties from the dead, and no previous government has fallen so far and so fast as Starmer’s.

In principle, it’s clear: get the economy growing, inflation down, deliver better public services, cut taxes, stop the boats and empty the migrant hotels. If a new leader can do that, it’d be worth it; if not, then the Labour civil war would make matters worse.