Labour forced to ask 'who their core voters really are' as new poll shows Nigel Farage winning stunning share of seats

It comes after shock polling of 13,000 UK adults last week found that Reform UK is on the brink of gaining enough support to form a majority, giving the keys to Nigel Farage as he is on course to become the next Prime Minister of Britain.

James Crouch, head of policy and public affairs at Opinium, told GB News: "Reform’s rise puts the whole party system on notice."

He said: "Reform UK’s surge is being fuelled by both Labour and the Conservatives facing their own existential crises, and it should force all three parties to ask who their core voters really are.

"Labour is losing support in two directions: a sizeable bloc to the Greens and Lib Dems and a smaller but still significant bloc to Reform UK.

"Together, nearly two in five Labour voters appear to be deserting the party. Crucially, this is happening fairly evenly across the country."

A separate Survation survey for LabourList on Sunday showed 53 per cent of the party membership want Keir Starmer not to be leader by the next election.

Under a third (31 per cent) back the current Prime Minister in his role until then.

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A third poll, this time conducted by Ipsos, showed that Mr Starmer is the least popular Prime Minister since records began, with a net negative 66 satisfaction rating.

That figure places him below every person to have taken the job since Margaret Thatcher - with every PM since David Cameron receiving incrementally worse ratings at their lowest.

Just 13 per cent of Britons are satisfied with the way Keir Starmer is doing his job as Prime Minister, a backslide of six percentage points since June this year.

Nearly four in five people are dissatisfied at 79 per cent - handing him a net rating of -66, or the lowest satisfaction rating for any PM since 1977.

Mr Crouch added that the Conservatives, meanwhile, are "bleeding support from their right flank."

He told the People's Channel: "This is particularly dangerous: they are just about clinging on to their more liberal voters in a handful of metropolitan areas but are losing swathes of their rural and small-town base to Reform.

"This creates the conditions for Reform UK to win a surprisingly large number of seats, but means the party could be biting off more than it can chew.

"Reform now faces a challenge of its own: it doesn’t yet know who its new voters are. Immigration is its clearest policy offer, but its support now spans affluent rural suburbs and struggling ex-industrial towns.

"Its rise reflects a race to the bottom by the established parties, but can Reform hold this coalition together any better than Boris Johnson did?"

"Both Labour and the Conservatives will need a serious period of soul-searching to decide what kind of parties they want to be in a world where they may only capture 20 per cent of the vote.

"One day, Reform will have to do the same, and decide what kind of governing party it wants to become."

Adam Drummond, Head of Quantitative Research at Public First, agreed that the polls are saying that Reform are leading Labour, but added: "There’s some slight disagreement about how big that gap is and who’s in third, fourth or fifth place."

The YouGov projection shows that the Reform would be 15 seats short of the formal winning line of 326 if a General Election were held today, predicted to win 311 of the 650 seats.

The increase of 55 seats from the last YouGov data in June would make the party the largest in the UK, but would still result in a hung parliament.

As Nigel Farage's party currently holds only five seats, the predicted gains of 306 additional MPs would be the largest increase in any election in British history.

Labour is predicted to win 144 seats, the Liberal Democrats 78 seats, the Conservatives 45 seats, the SNP 37 seats, and the Greens seven seats, with Plaid Cymru on six seats and left-wing challengers winning 3 seats.

Reacting to the figures, the pollster said: "This MRP projection comes from a poll where Reform lead Labour by 27 per cent to 21 per cent, so the seat numbers are not that surprising, but it does show what an unprecedented period of party fragmentation we’re in at the moment.

"A party getting 311 seats off the back of a smaller share of the vote than Gordon Brown managed in 2010, coming after Labour won a landslide with only 34 per cent last year.

"Reform’s vote comes from a combination of right-wing defections from the Tories but also voters who think 'the Tories messed up, Labour have messed up, who else is there?'

"The key number really is that after this month there will be another three Labour conferences before the next General Election is due.

"It’s not unusual for a governing party to be behind in the polls (at this stage in 2011 Ed Miliband’s Labour was about five points ahead) and Governments can recover.

Labour Party members are currently attending their 2025 annual Party Conference in Liverpool.

Mr Drummond added: "What Labour need to worry about is whether their Governing agenda is going to be enough to make them popular again. The reason for such despondency in the party is the fear that it isn’t."