By William James
LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned on Friday that a vote for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party would hand electoral victory to Labour, after a poll put the right-wing group ahead of Sunak’s Conservatives for the first time.
Farage is one of Britain’s most recognisable politicians best known for his decades long – and eventually successful – crusade for Britain to leave the European Union. His Reform UK party began life as the Brexit Party in 2018, during the tortuous negotiations on how Britain would leave the bloc.
Farage’s unexpected return to frontline politics has split support among right-of-centre voters, badly damaging Sunak’s hopes of winning an election he was already predicted to lose to the opposition Labour Party.
That impact was shown in a YouGov poll on Thursday which put Reform UK on 19%, up from 17% previously, and the Conservative Party unchanged on 18%. Labour, led by Keir Starmer, topped the poll with 37%.
“If this poll was replicated it would hand a blank cheque to Labour,” Sunak said in Italy, where he is attending the G7 summit, according to remarks reported by British media.
“Ultimately a vote for anyone who is not a Conservative candidate makes it more likely that Keir Starmer is in No.10.”
Farage said his party had made a “phenomenal” start to the campaign and was now the real opposition to Starmer’s Labour.
Labour said Farage, who has stood unsuccessfully for parliament seven times, had never been tested on delivering the changes he called for, but should not be underestimated.
“In terms of Labour versus Reform, we’re going to take them on. We’re going to take them on in the battle of ideas and the battle of arguments,” Labour’s health policy chief told Sky News.
Other opinion polls show the Conservatives much further ahead of Reform, but most still show a rise in support for the party since Farage took over.
“However one looks at it – although it may not be the case that Reform are ahead … on average they might still be about four or five points behind – this is still bad news for the Conservatives,” polling expert John Curtice told the BBC.
Despite the strong showing Reform is not forecast to win many, if any, parliamentary seats.
Its support is spread comparatively evenly across the country, whereas backing for the larger and more established parties is more concentrated by geographic areas.
Britain has a first-past-the-post electoral system, meaning Reform could pick up millions of votes across the country without winning any of parliament’s 650 individual constituencies.
Farage did not set a target for the number of seats he wanted to win.
“We have a completely outdated electoral system. It’s not fit for purpose, but it is what it is,” he told the BBC.
“Whatever we do, we may not get the number of seats we deserve. But are we going to win seats in parliament? Yes. How many? … we’ve got momentum behind us and there’s three long weeks to go.”
(Reporting by William James, additional reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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