A Sinking Ship

Reform UK continues to bleed support. This week, our forecast has the party lose a further 11 seats, 7 to a healing Conservative Party and 3 to the Labour Party, waiting to judge its new leadership. Many traditional Tory seats, such as Broadlands and Fakeham which has remained a Conservative seat since Broadlands was formed in 2010, have swung back in favour of the natural party of governance. This is likely due to a combination of Kemi Badenoch steadying the Tories and, more importantly, a serious dent in Reform’s momentum and image caused largely by missteps by Farage. The Conservative Party are still incredibly far from polling enough support to mount a serious challenge to power, with a projected 110 seats remaining below their cataclysmic total for the 2024 election. Yet there certainly are signs of life.  

The Tory party has equally started biting back at the Liberal Democrats. Tipping South Shropshire and North Dorset in their favour, to the detriment of Ed Davey’s party, the Tory Party are certainly still in the fight. Yet these are slender changes. Take South Shropshire, for instance: Reform, the Lib-Dems and the Conservatives all remain within 1% of each other in our final projection for this week. This proves that, while signs of regeneration are there, the Conservatives must still fight tooth and nail at the next election for every seat, or risk being effectively wiped off the electoral map.  

Our article ‘Shapeshifter Farage’, released on the 7th of July, noted that ‘peak Farage’ has possibly been reached. The consistent ebbing of support back to the traditional 2 main parties has been noted for weeks, largely supporting the notion. This equally occurred before Farage pulled his desperate and miscalculated by-election stunt, which is likely to disillusion many more moderate voters living in traditional Conservative constituencies. This shift, highlighted in this analysis, is likely to widen as the spectacle of Farage vs Count Binface relegates Farage to the fringe of British politics. This will become increasingly evident in our forecasting in the coming weeks, with data released this week largely concerning wider shifts before this development. Expect significant changes to be reported here in the coming weeks.  

Reform has equally been losing to the Labour front. While the furore around Andy Burnham appears to have died down, as voters will increasingly ignore abstract promises and prioritise concrete proposals and actions from a prime minister-in-waiting, seats in the North of England such as Jarrow and Gateshead East, or Morecambe and Lunesdale return to the Labour Party.  

It is becoming increasingly clear that Labour is within striking distance of Reform, something that mere weeks ago appeared impossible. By our calculations, they are only 5.6 points behind nationally, whilst our projected seat calculation sets Labour a mere 12 seats behind. British politics is set up for great flux. Our shift analysis in the coming weeks can help paint a picture of how the nation reacts to both Farage’s pointless and self-destructive by-election and Burnham’s appointment as Prime Minister. Interesting which development is written first.