Reform UK will shatter the Tories without winning a single seat
Labour would not achieve an overall majority without Tice’s party taking away voters, polling suggests
REFORM UK, the Right-wing party set up by Nigel Farage, will hand Labour a huge majority by drawing millions of voters away from the Conservatives, polling suggests.
The former Brexit Party, now led by the businessman Richard Tice, will cost the Conservatives 96 seats, a Yougov poll predicts.
Without the influence of Reform, Labour would not win an overall majority, it is forecast. If Reform goes ahead with its plan to contest 630 seats, Labour will win a 120-seat majority.
In 2019, when Boris Johnson won an 80-seat majority, he was helped not only by the fact that his opponent was Jeremy Corbyn but also by Mr Farage’s decision not to contest the 317 seats Theresa May had won in 2017.
That gave the Tories a clear run against Labour, and the Brexit Party did not win any seats despite gaining 644,257 votes – around half as many as the SNP, which won 48 seats.
Crucially, Mr Tice has ruled out an electoral pact with the Conservatives this time, meaning support for Reform will be the decisive factor in scores of seats, even though it is not expected to return a single MP.
Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the House, is one of several Cabinet ministers predicted to lose their seat thanks to a strong showing by Reform in her Portsmouth North constituency.
Mr Tice’s party is predicted to win 13 per cent of the vote, more than enough to swing the result in Labour’s favour, Reform party leader Richard Tice and deputy Ben Habib campaigning on Saturday with the Labour candidate is forecast to take 36 per cent of the votes – just three per cent more than Mrs Mordaunt.
It is a similar story for Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, Victoria Prentis, the Attorney General, Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary and Johnny Mercer, the minister for veterans’ affairs.
The biggest showing for Reform is predicted to be in Ashfield, currently held by Lee Anderson, the Conservative Party deputy chairman, where Mr Tice’s party is forecast to take a 22 per cent vote share, just shy of Mr Anderson on 23 per cent, with Labour winning on 38 per cent.
In Mr Anderson’s constituency, however, the poll does not take into account votes that are likely to be cast for the Ashfield Independents, which came second in 2019.
Reform is on course to take more than 10 per cent of the vote in 73 constituencies. Yesterday, Mr Tice told The
Daily Telegraph that the Brexit Party had been “betrayed” in 2019 because the Conservatives did not deliver on their Brexit promises, saying he was not prepared to be betrayed again.
He even made the bold suggestion that the Tories should be the ones stepping aside for Reform UK.
In several recent opinion polls, about 10 per cent of voters have said they would back Reform, a similar percentage to the Lib Dems.
Because Reform’s vote is likely to be evenly spread throughout England, Wales and Scotland, the party is not expected to come first in any seat, meaning it will have no MPS.
In contrast, the Lib Dems will pile up enough votes in key areas to win 48 seats – an increase of 37 on 2019 – many of them in the so-called Blue Wall in the south of England.
The news could get even worse for the Conservatives. Recent polls suggest support for Reform would surge even further if Mr Farage returned as leader.
Mr Farage, currently the honorary president of the party, has not ruled out a return to front-line politics and has repeatedly said that “timing is everything”, suggesting he could be eyeing a major move later in the year.
In 2019, Mr Farage said he was putting country before party by pulling out of 317 seats won by the Conservatives in 2017.
He said he was concerned that if the Brexit Party stood in every seat it would split the Right-wing vote, resulting in dozens of Lib Dem MPS being elected and making a second EU referendum a possibility.
He predicted that the Conservative vote would disappear if the party broke “firm commitments and promises made to the British people”.