Nigel Farage's far-right would win the UK elections if they were held now.
The Conservatives could be wiped off the map, as happened with the Liberals in 1922, replaced by Labour, according to the polls.
LondonAlmost a year after the victory Labour in the UK general election, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's popularity is plummeting. And that of the populist and xenophobic Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party –the same politician who did not rest until to provoke a divorce with the European Union nine years ago, it's been through the roof. So much so that, in recent days, various polls have given it a good chance of becoming one. premier. Or at least win the elections if they were held tomorrow and not in the summer of 2029, when they are scheduled to be called.
A YouGov MRP-type survey, released by The Times, the first since Labour's aforementioned landslide victory in July 2024, suggests Starmer would lose 233 of the 412 seats he won. He would be left with just 46 MPs, behind even the Liberal Democrats.
In fact, his preeminence as the cornerstone of the Westminster political system would be seriously threatened, to the point of potentially crumbling, as happened after the 1922 general election when the Labour Party became the main Labour party. Tories.
However, according to the MRP poll, no party would have an easy time governing, and the islands' political landscape would become fragmented. This is highly unusual given the electoral system, which rewards majorities and large parties.
A very reliable system
MRP polls are particularly valuable because they allow the outcome of each constituency—there are 650 in the UK—to be predicted using data collected at the state level. The survey analyzes how different segments of the electorate vote and calculates the number of each group in each district. This allows the poll to estimate the local winner in a specific area without having directly questioned the voting population. YouGov successfully used this system in 2017, when it announced that Theresa May would lose her absolute majority against the forecasts of other polling companies and the opinions of analysts.
The trend of this MRP poll coincides with that indicated last Sunday by Ipsos based on another conventional method and with a much smaller sample size—1,180 people versus 11,000 or so—according to which the Reform Party would achieve 34% of the vote, compared to 25%. The Conservatives would also sink to 15%. But perhaps the most worrying figure for Starmer is that only 19% of the population considers his government to be satisfactory.
All of this outlines a highly fragmented British political landscape in which the foundations of the British two-party system have become very unstable. One of the biggest beneficiaries of these cracks would once again be the Scottish National Party, which would regain ground relative to the shock it suffered last year. With all the necessary precautions, given that elections are still four years away, the United Kingdom appears to be heading towards the same territory as much of continental Europe, where the rise of the far right threatens the very foundations of democracy.
