Blow for Farage as Reform UK stuck in third place in polls

Reform UK have cemented their position as the third-most popular party in the UK, according to a new poll which will come as a huge blow to Nigel Farage.

For the second week in a row, YouGov’s weekly survey put Reform UK behind both Labour and the Tories.

The poll of 2,520 adults, taken between 18 and 19 October, put Labour up three points on 27 per cent.

The Tories were unchanged at 23 per cent. While Reform were up one point, they were on 22 per cent.

The Greens continued to fall after the row over antisemitism in the party, with the party now on 10 per cent. They were just behind the Lib Dems who were also down one point to 11 per cent.

The surge for Labour support is a boost for Andy Burnham ahead of next week’s Budget. It also indicates that Labour voters who had switched to the Greens may be moving back to the party under his leadership.

Mr Burnham announced last week that Labour would not do a deal with the Greens following its controversial conference vote to say “Zionism is racism”.

The results came out after a difficult weekend for Reform following a series of revelations of racism and misogyny behind the scenes in an investigation by ITV.

The party had already been hit by donation scandals with police investigations into deputy leader Richard Tice, Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick, former chief of staff Dan Jukes and former policy director James Orr.

Meanwhile, there is an ongoing investigation by the standards commissioner into a £5 million gift to Mr Farage from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

Mr Farage is set to try to rally support for his flagging party which has lost more than 10 points in opinion polling in the last year with a rally in Plymouth.

Last year Mr Farage accused YouTube of deliberately underplaying Reform support as his party’s ratings began to drop for all polling companies.

Following the latest YouGov poll Mr Farage’s ally Raheem Kassam dismissed the result saying: “YouGov absolutely all over the place lately.”

However, Reform was also in third place with More in Common last week.

According to Electoral Calculus the poll would give no party an overall majority but Labour would be the biggest party with almost 300 seats probably needing the support of the Lib Dems in a coalition.