A Bombshell New Poll -Why Reform Is Surging

Nigel Farage celebrates at the Spectator Parliamentarian Awards, December 2024

MATT GOODWIN

Earlier this week, I attended the Spectator Awards, a key event for London’s media class, where I watched a triumphant Nigel Farage win Newcomer of the Year, having finally been elected to the House of Commons back in July.

I’ve known Nigel Farage for a long time and so I know that, for him, receiving this award, at this particular event, in front of this particular crowd, was a big deal.

Fifteen years ago, when he first attended the Spectator Awards as leader of UKIP, he was laughed out the room. The media class thought Farage was a joke.

But as he said in his victory speech this week, they’re not laughing now.

Having consistently failed to diagnose the mood of the nation, the media class has been forced to watch Nigel Farage completely transform the country, from Brexit to establishing a beachhead in parliament with four million votes and five MPs.

And now, as he warned them in his speech, they’re going to have to watch him lead another major revolt, with Reform on its way to winning hundreds more seats in 2029.

Some people in the room would no doubt have scoffed at this suggestion, too.

But then, yesterday, came a bombshell poll which, for the first time in history, put Nigel Farage’s Reform party ahead of the incumbent Labour Party.

Sitting comfortably on 24% —Reform’s highest share of the vote with any pollster since the election—Farage’s party has not only overtaken Labour but is also within the margin of error of overtaking the Tories, who are only 2-points ahead, on 26%.

What we’re witnessing, then, with the two big parties only attracting 49% of voters between them, is the continuing ‘fragmentation’ of the British political system.

A traditionally stable two-party system is breaking apart before our very eyes, morphing into a highly volatile multi-party system.

And if you look closely at this poll you’ll see other things, too.

Aside from Reform now attracting one in four voters, sitting 10 points higher than what they polled at the general election back in July, they’re also more popular than the Tories among every age group except one —pensioners.

The Tories are still just about ahead of Reform but only among the over-65s, while Reform is now leading the Tories among the young and middle-aged.

Alongside the fact that last week Reform surpassed 100,000 party members, in an age in which we’re told that mass party memberships are a thing of the past, this too suggests that the party has serious potential to breakthrough in a major way in 2029.

Is this just one freak poll? Maybe. But then again, maybe not.

If you look at all of the latest polls then you’ll find that Reform is now averaging more than 20% of the vote, significantly up on the 14% it polled at the election in July.

Nor is there any evidence that the new leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, is winning back the big chunk of Reformers who abandoned the Tories.

While Farage’s party was averaging just over 18% before Badenoch’s arrival, they’re averaging just over 20% now, suggesting their support is stable if not higher.

So, what’s going on?

Well, if you’re a regular reader of this Substack then you’ll know exactly what’s going on. Reform’s surge is really about just one word.

Immigration.

Mass, uncontrolled, unprecedented immigration.

As we showed before the general election, while Reform is certainly attracting people who are pessimistic about the economy and distrustful of politics, their overwhelming priority is to stop and dramatically lower illegal and legal immigration.

An issue, by the way, which is the number one issue in the country, not only among Reformers.

And yet, ever since the general election, the elite class in this country has appeared determined to do all it can do to inflame people’s legitimate concerns about this issue, handing Nigel Farage and Reform even more space on the political landscape.

Consider just a few things we’ve learned and seen over the last five months.

We’ve learned that despite all the promises to bring it down net migration has now rocketed to nearly one million people a year.

We’ve learned that enough people to fill the city of Birmingham migrated into the country last year, in just one year.

We’ve learned that Britain’s population is forecast to grow by at least another 6.5 million people by the year 2036.

We’ve learned that mass immigration is now not only the biggest drive of Britain’s population growth but is, in fact, the only driver of this growth.

We’ve learned that 86% of all immigration that’s now coming into Britain is coming from outside Europe —from poorer and radically different nations and cultures.

We’ve learned that the broken asylum system which neither of the big parties are willing to fix is costing us at least £5.4 billion a year, at the very same time as we’re taking winter fuel payments off pensioners and smashing family farms.

We’ve learned that over the last four years, only 15-18% of people who migrated into Britain came here to work in skilled jobs.

We’ve learned that on average each low-wage, low-skill migrant is costing the British taxpayer between £150,000 and £1 million a year.

We’ve learned that over the last four years some 40,000 criminal offences were committed on Britain’s streets by immigrants who avoided deportation.

And we’ve learned, only this week, that since the financial crisis some 441,000 people from outside the UK have been given new social housing lettings.

I could go on but you get the point.

Ever since the general election the effects of this extreme, irresponsible, divisive, and very economically costly policy have become increasingly visible to the British people which has, in turn, created more space for Nigel Farage and Reform.

If the Westminster class doesn’t want Farage around, in other words, then it should deal with the underlying issue of mass immigration.

But it won’t do that —it continually refuses to do that.

No matter what they say in public, both Left and Right, both Labour and the Tories, the Uniparty, remain completely committed to this disastrous policy.

Mass immigration was designed and delivered by New Labour, consolidated by David Cameron, put on steroids by Boris Johnson, and is now being further entrenched by Keir Starmer, who despite what he says continues to liberalise the system while refusing to do what needs to be done to control our own borders.

In fact, the situation has become so absurd that when Keir Starmer sought to revive his failing premiership, yesterday, by outlining several new targets, he didn’t even mention immigration at all!

The issue that is the number one issue for ordinary voters, in other words, is not even mentioned by their prime minister.

This is why Nigel Farage is once again surging.

This is why Reform is now bearing down on the big two parties.

And this is why British politics once again looks ripe for a serious revolt against the liberal establishment, like that which Trump just delivered in America.

The political, media, and cultural class were given a clear opportunity after Brexit to respond to people’s legitimate concerns about this issue by lowering immigration, controlling the borders and keeping British people safe.

But they chose not to do that.

They chose to do the very opposite, with the Uniparty pushing the pedal down on mass uncontrolled immigration while flinging the doors wide open to even more low-skill, low-wage, and culturally incompatible people from outside Europe.

And so now, between today and 2029, they will suffer the political consequences of this disastrous decision.

They will have to watch Reform morph into a mainstream force, tearing their way through the Red Wall, Wales, along coastal England, and through Kent and Essex —winning areas where, come 2029, neither the Tories nor Labour will be competitive.

The British realignment, the realignment that started with Brexit but was then completely squandered by the Tories, is still coming.

And as Nigel Farage told that elite crowd in a swanky hotel in London, it will be he and his party, not the establishment, that will be the main beneficiary of all this.

This article (A bombshell new poll -why Reform is surging) was created and published by Matt Goodwin and is republished here under “Fair Use”