More Than Half Of Public Think A Reform Government Would Be A Big Risk To The UK
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage attended a meeting on Monday alongside the Head of Kent County Council, Linden Kemkaran (Alamy)
4 min read
More than half of the public think that electing a Reform government led by Nigel Farage would be a big risk for the UK, according to new polling.
To mark the first anniversary of the 2024 general election, Thinks Insight & Strategy surveyed 2,082 people about the state of politics and the political parties.
According to the poll, shared exclusively with PoliticsHome, 55 per cent of people said electing a Reform government would be a big risk for the UK, while 35 per cent responded that electing a Reform government would be no more risky for the UK than a Labour or Conservative government.
Half of respondents (50 per cent) said they “don't really know” what Reform UK would do if it actually got into government, while a quarter (25 per cent) disagreed with this statement.
Exactly half of all respondents also said that they did not know anything about any Reform UK politicians other than party leader Nigel Farage, while 27 per cent disagreed.
The top chart shows a survey of those considering voting for Reform (664 respondents) and the bottom chart shows a survey of all voter types (2,082 respondents) (Thinks Insight & Strategy)
Since winning five seats at last year's election, Reform's popularity has increased significantly, with the party doing major damage to both the Tories and Labour at the May elections.
With Farage's party regularly leading voter intention polls, discussion about Reform UK has turned to whether it can go on to form a government at the next general election, which must be called by August 2029.
Nearly half (47 per cent) of those polled by Thinks Insight said that Reform would go from strength to strength in the future, compared to 38 per cent who said that the party’s level of support had peaked and was unlikely to grow.
However, despite having just a small handful of MPs, the party has struggled to avoid internal disruption.
Over the weekend, the party lost its second MP since the election when James McMurdock suspended himself after The Sunday Times reported allegations that he borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s loans scheme during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Rupert Lowe had the whip suspended in March after allegations of bullying and verbal threats against chairman Zia Yusuf and his own staff. This leaves only three out of the five Reform MPs who were elected in 2024 still in the party.
Yusuf himself resigned as party chairman at the start of June, only to return to the fold two days later.
In the last few weeks, two rival political groups have emerged to compete with Reform – one, Restore Britain, launched by Lowe, and the other, Advance UK, created by former deputy leader Ben Habib, who quit the party last year due to "fundamental differences" with Farage.
Survey of 2,082 respondents (Thinks Insight & Strategy)
According to Allie Jennings, director of Thinks Insight & Strategy, the findings show that large numbers of voters still have major doubts about the prospect of Reform running the country.
“For a substantial minority of voters, a Reform government does not feel like a big risk.
“Voters who cast their ballot for Reform in 2024 are not looking back, and those who are now considering them tend to feel they don't have much to lose," she told PoliticsHome.
“However, for the majority, a Reform government feels very risky for the UK.
"In our focus groups with 2024 Labour voters now considering the Liberal Democrats or the Greens, many said they would be worried for the safety of minority groups under a Reform government, particularly those from ethnic minorities. For this group of voters, if the threat of Reform felt credible, then it could be enough to see them return to Labour."
The same survey also tested the public assessment of Labour's first year in government. The research, carried out between 27-29 June, found that the public currently sees the Keir Starmer administration as worse than the Conservative governments led by former prime ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak in the majority of areas polled.
However, the Labour administration was still preferred to today's alternatives in most areas surveyed, including the cost of living, improving NHS waiting times, and getting the economy growing again.
