Keir Starmer’s Labour government has hit a new low in the polls, with just a fifth of voters saying they’d back the party for a second term in power.
A new YouGov survey shows Reform UK continuing to come top when Brits are asked how they’d vote if there was a general election tomorrow – a position it has held consistently since around April.
Over the past two months, the gap between the two parties has only grown wider, though this has mainly been down to a collapse in Labour’s popularity rather than a substantial increase for Reform.
The latest numbers come at the end of a summer that has been dominated by headlines about illegal migration.
Earlier this month, the number of people who have arrived in the UK on small boats across the Channel since Starmer became Prime Minister hit the 50,000 milestone.
On Sunday, the Home Office announced plans to create an independent body which would deal with asylum appeals, in an effort to dramatically speed up decision-making.
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And the ‘one-in, one-out’ migrant deal with France, which is intended to disincentivise people from making the risky journey across the Channel, is expected to begin within weeks, according to the Times.
Meanwhile, Reform leader Nigel Farage unveiled his radical plan for ending illegal migration in an event at an Oxford airport hangar yesterday.
He said a government under his leadership would suspend the UK’s asylum system and disapply a series of international agreements to enable migrants to be forcibly deported.
Since the election last year, immigration has overtaken the economy and the health service as the issue voters consider the most important facing the country, YouGov has found.
The voting intention figure for Labour in the latest poll is its lowest since before Starmer became leader in 2020.
It puts the party just three points ahead of the struggling Conservatives, who are just one point ahead of the Liberal Democrats.
The poll continues to show a remarkably fragmented political landscape in the UK, with no single party hitting more than 30% – though Reform comes closest at 28%.
None of the UK’s parties have broken that barrier in a YouGov survey since the pollsters resumed asking about voting intention at the beginning of this year.
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