Don’t believe the polls – Reform are not imploding

In 2005, Oasis released the album Don’t Believe the Truth. A widely acclaimed album, it included songs such as The Importance of Being Idle and Part of the Queue.

Yet, with Burnham’s fixation on the Mancunian band, he would do well to apply such a message to the polling numbers which currently doing the rounds in his honour, because two surveys released yesterday are being read as the beginning of the end for Reform, but I’m not convinced either of them can bear such a weight.

More in Common put Labour ahead on 28 per cent of the vote, 4 points ahead of Reform, 6 points in front of the Tories, 16 in front of the Liberal Democrats and 20 ahead of the Greens (who remembers them?).

YouGov, meanwhile, had Labour and Reform tied on 22 per cent each, with the Tories trailing by just one point at 21 per cent. Whilst the two polling firms may well disagree over who is the front-runner, what they do not disagree on is that Reform has stalled. The party appears to have peaked at just over 30 per cent, and has been on a downward slide ever since.

Now, many will reach for the easy argument. That this is, quite simply, the end of Reform. That Farage’s pet project is entering its final days, set to implode at any moment. That we can all rejoice at the return of two-party politics.

Whilst I would very much desire this to be true (the search for a safe seat lives on), this is by no means the end of Reform UK. To treat a fortnight’s polling as a verdict on a party’s lifespan would be foolish, and is exactly the kind of thinking that allowed Reform to become such a thorn in our side in the first place.

Indeed, this drop in the polls may well be nothing more than a wobble, and there are two clear reasons for it.

The most obvious of which is Burnham’s accession to Number 10. He has enjoyed a honeymoon period thus far, announced a string of policies which are broadly popular, and offers a breath of fresh air from the android-like dullness of Keir Starmer. Cutting electricity bills, promising to end rough sleeping, talking in full sentences without sounding like he’s reading them off an autocue for the first time – it’s all landed well precisely because it arrived after two years of a Prime Minister who managed to make even good news sound like an apology.

He has signalled to the public that he understands their concerns, and is eager to give them “breathing space.” A fairly easy way to get a quick bump in the polls.

Couple this with the spotlight of public scrutiny that is shining down on Farage and you have a combination which is doing rather a lot of heavy lifting. As the Reform UK leader attempts to fend off attacks about his finances, he is in the unfavourable position of having to spend his entire summer campaigning against a man dressed as a bin. It is not as though the nation has suddenly been won over by the party donning the red rose. No, this is nothing more than a new PM’s honeymoon phase overlapping with his rival’s worst week in politics. To perceive it as anything more would be, at this stage, fanciful.

It’s also worth remembering Reform have wobbled before and recovered without much difficulty. They possess a knack for weathering controversial political storms. The party has experienced momentary dips beforehand, and within a matter of weeks has returned to its prior polling levels.

It’s no secret as to why this is. The reason people are siding with Reform, whether on matters of immigration, the cost of living, or simply because they are fed up of the two main parties, hasn’t suddenly disappeared. Their grievances are still present, and to pretend as though they have vanished would be silly. There’s no reason, therefore, to assume this dip is any different simply because the circumstances surrounding it are slightly more colourful than before.

But whilst I could dedicate far more time to the battle between Labour and Reform, there is one party I haven’t yet mentioned in detail: the Conservatives. A party given up for dead just 18 months ago, they have steadied themselves and barely moved since. Whilst the other two parties shift up and down in the polls almost constantly, the Tories have sat at around the 20 per cent mark for some months now.

Many (including, dare I say, myself for some time) have seen this as a fundamental failing. That we cannot reach the levels we saw prior to Sunak. But I would contest that, amidst so much political volatility from other parties, a sense of stability is actually rather welcome. It proves that, somewhere in Britain, there are a growing and stable set of voters who have been brought on side. We need only look at More in Common’s seat projection to see that, despite being 4 per cent behind Reform, under First Past the Post the Tories would actually win 36 more seats than them.

It should be noted that this is not an argument for complacency, however. Reform’s slow fall is most certainly real, and should worry them more than their press office is currently letting on. But a sharp fall induced by a honeymoon and a scandal is not the same as a fall induced by a genuine shift in what voters want, and mistaking the former for the latter is how one inevitably gets blindsided in a few months time. Because once the honeymoon ends and the scandal fades, things may well return to normal – somewhere closer to where they started.

And our members seem to recognise this as well. In our most recent survey, we asked what ConservativeHome members made of a possible Burnham bounce in the polls. 76 per cent of respondents said that there would be a short-lived bump – inevitably falling back to normal levels within a few weeks.

So we should take these polls with a rather significant pinch of salt. The Westminster commentariat will likely obsess over these numbers and seat projections – pushing the idea that Reform is on the way out. But step outside the confines of SW1, and this is not an attitude shared by the public. They might see Farage as dodgy, and they might see Burnham as some quasi-messianic figure – but they are not yet wholly convinced. The scales could tip back to Farage’s favour if the foot is taken off the peddle.

Complacency cannot be afforded. Oasis told us that we should not believe the truth. But we should not believe the polls either.

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