Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party widened its lead over the governing Labour Party in the wake of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and others attempting to tarnish the upstart populist party as racist.
Prime Minister Starmer’s desperate bid to halt the growing support for Farage by turning to the classic leftist political playbook of castigating opponents as bigots appears to have backfired.
A poll of 2,050 UK adults conducted by Opinium in the aftermath of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool last week found that Reform increased its support by two points to 34 per cent, while Labour slid another point down to 21 per cent.
This came despite Labour throwing the kitchen sink at Farage and Reform, with Starmer branding the party’s plans to deport hundreds of thousands of migrants as “racist” and his deputy, David Lammy, making spurious accusations linking Farage to the “Hitler Youth” — an organisation that was disbanded decades before the Brexit leader’s birth.
The focus on Farage also appears to have landed flat with voters seeking answers from the government on the many issues facing the country.
According to the survey, 50 per cent of voters said the governing party had a bad conference, including 37 per cent of Labour supporters. Concerning Starmer’s speech specifically, 34 per cent had a negative opinion, compared to just 23 per cent positive.
The party also saw a five-point decline in voter perception of having “similar views to my own” down to a net negative of 34. Meanwhile, 65 per cent said that the party is failing to rebuild trust in politics, 61 per cent said Labour is failing to provide hope or optimism, and 59 per cent said the party is failing to provide competent governance.
Despite Starmer’s critique of Farage for supposedly being too negative about Britain, more voters saw the Brexit boss as being optimistic about the country’s future than the prime minister, by a margin of 39 to 32 per cent.
Responding to the findings, James Crouch, head of policy and public affairs at Opinium, said: “While the mood among Conference goers may have been that Labour and Starmer had at least not a bad week, public sentiment remains deeply negative.
“The public don’t think Labour have had a good week, they see a party struggling to rebuild trust in politics, inspire hope, or demonstrate competent governance.
“Despite Labour’s criticism this week of Farage and Reform talking down Britain and being negative, the public are actually more likely to view Starmer as pessimistic about the country’s future than Farage, suggesting Labour must first address how they are perceived before challenging others.”
Reform UK policy chief Zia Yusuf remarked: “Turns out calling Nigel Farage and all our voters names does not work!”
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