A new poll has put Reform UK one point ahead of the Labour Party for the first time.
Research by pollsters at FindOutNow put Nigel Farage’s party on 24 per cent, one point above Labour on 23 per cent.
While Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party came higher than both, at 26 per cent, with the Lib Dems on 11 per cent and the Greens on nine per cent.
It comes shortly after reports emerged X and Tesla owner Elon Musk could consider donating £78m ($100m) to Reform in the wake of Donald Trump’s election win in the US.
But Reform UK leader Farage told the BBC it was “complete news to me” and said: “I’ve heard nothing of the kind”.
Commenting on the poll Reform UK chairman, Zia Yusuf said: “Reform has all the momentum in British politics.
“For the first time we are now polling ahead of Labour. We recently surged past 100,000 members, are adding members at a record pace, and we are just getting started.”
Tory Reform crossover?
He predicted: “The British people want real change after years of failure and deception. Reform will form the next government of the United Kingdom.”
Pollster Luke Tryll from More in Common posted on X that the FindOutNow poll “shows just how deeply we are in 3.5 party politics now”, but he cautioned: “There was a Tory Reform crossover in some polls in the election – tracking back these do clearly seem wide of the mark.”
According to FindOutNow’s head of research Tyron Surmon, the poll “notably records a lower Labour vote share than other polling companies” and he puts this largely down to a different “voting intention methodology” being used.
Writing on their website, Surmon said FindOutNow explicitly asks people if they are going to vote, “before asking them which party they plan to vote for”, which he said avoids encouraging those unlikely to vote to select a party anyway.
The polling firm, he added, also excludes respondents who then “say they ‘don’t know’ how they plan to vote – even after prompting”, rather than assigning them to a party based on demographics or previous voting behaviour, as he claimed other pollsters sometimes do.
He said: “Our new voting intention tracker finds the Conservatives as the most popular party with Labour pushed into third, polling 1 point lower than Reform UK.
“While those approaches allow for a more stable voting intention series over time, our approach makes our voting intentions more sensitive to the current stated voting behaviour of respondents.”