What Farage will do now - Matt Goodwin outlines Nigel's action plan for Reform

"What he's going to be doing now, he's going to go back to the playbook he first designed in 2014, which was what the 2015 election was supposed to be about, achieve lots of second places in Labour areas.

"And remember they thought Ed Miliband and Labour would win in 2015.

"And what happened is Cameron pulled that rabbit out of the hat through the referendum for Brexit, which meant this strategy that you're going to see play out today was put on hold.

"So what Nigel will do is go back to that strategy, announce a second flank against Labour and he'll do well. "Just one thing on Jeremy Hunt and the Conservative Party.

"This isn't just another leadership election. This is the most important leadership election in their contemporary history. Because if they get this wrong, if they put in a Jeremy Hunt or they put in a Tom Tugendhat or they put in some kind of one nation liberal who doesn't get how the direction of travel is changing, they won't just be on life support. Well, they could be heading to the morgue at Hailsham."

Goodwin added: "Keir Starmer should be very concerned given that a lot of those second places went to Reform and we know his one remarkable stat the Labour vote share in England went up 0.6% - flat as a pancake - Reform went up 13% - a new party you'd expect to see gains - but did well in pro-Brexit often Labour held seats.

"What Farage will do is going to turn his tanks towards Labour and his basically going to hold Starmer to account on legal migration, illegal migration, wokery and leaving the ECHR and just attacking Labour non-stop."

The pollster said that Reform UK has “stormed through” in areas where voters had previously backed Boris Johnson, costing the Conservatives many seats.

He continued: “Reform, overall, the vote’s gone up 13% but what's happened is the Conservatives have basically collapsed in the most pro-Brexit parts of the country.

“If you look at the less Brexity seats, the Conservative vote share’s gone down 12 points but, get this, it has gone down by nearly 30 points in the most pro-Brexit seats.

“What's happened in those areas is that big Boris Johnson coalition, working class voters, older voters, culturally conservative voters, very sceptical about mass immigration, anxious about small boats, basically, Reform has stormed through in those areas and cost the Conservatives a lot of seats.

“If you [look at] the margin of defeat for Conservatives, it is smaller than the vote for Reform in about 180 seats. So that gives you a sense of the scale of low level damage that Nigel Farage has done…

“But what they've basically done is they've caused all this damage to the Conservatives while also finishing second in a large swathe of Labour seats.

“So what does that mean for the 2024-29 parliament? It means it's there’s by-elections, Farage is probably going to end up winning quite a few of those. Local elections? Well, if he's organised, he's going to end up doing quite well in those too.

“In some ways, Keir Starmer has sort of been constrained a bit by Reform, because even now I think Labour HQ will be thinking, ‘well hang on a minute, we better be careful on these issues around migration around the borders, we can't actually ignore what's happening in the heartlands’.”

He added: “Nigel Farage has been given a wonderful hand of cards. It's how he plays them now.

“He's second in lots of Labour seats. He's a viable alternative to the Conservatives. He's got money flowing in. He's got a presence in the House of Commons. He's got the US election in the autumn.

“Much of Europe is swinging to the right…incumbent governments getting smashed because of inflation and the cost-of-living crisis and populist parties are doing really well.

“Voters are very anxious about immigration, Labour are going to be watched very closely on that issue. They've got to get that right…

"Labour's vote in England, it went up 0.6%, so there is no mass enthusiasm for this Labour government in England.

“It only surged in Scotland because people were so hacked off with the SNP. It went down in Wales. It actually retreated in Wales.

“So when I look at Keir Starmer and I think this guy's got 35 or 36 plus per cent of the national vote, this is not Blair…this is a very different kind of majority.”