Reform UK strengthens polling lead as Conservatives drop to fourth place

Reform UK is the most popular political party among voters and the Conservatives have fallen into fourth place, the latest opinion polling reveals.

Nigel Farage’s party has the backing of 29% of the public, according to YouGov’s latest voting intention survey, up 1% from last week.

Labour follows on 22%, down 1% from the previous week as ministers continue to face criticism over welfare cuts.

The Liberal Democrats are in third place in the YouGov polling with 17%, having overtaken the Conservatives, who are on 16%.

This is the lowest-ever vote share YouGov has recorded for the Tories, and the last time they were in fourth place in the pollster’s rankings was in June 2019, at the end of Theresa May’s premiership.

Dame Priti Patel, the Conservative shadow foreign secretary, told Times Radio her party’s position is not “at all surprising” after its general election defeat almost a year ago.

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak called the election in Downing Street on May 22 last year.

Senior Tory Dame Priti was insistent her party’s popularity could be recovered.

When asked if she thought the Conservatives could definitely come back, Dame Priti told the broadcaster: “Of course we can. We’ve absolutely done it before and we are working, I can tell you now, we’re working flat-out to ensure that we can absolutely do that.

“But it takes time. Winning back the trust and confidence of the British people takes time.”

The Greens are fifth place in YouGov’s survey, with 10% of voting intention among the 2,222 British adults who took part between May 18 and 19.

Elsewhere, former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg warned Labour will lose the trust of the public if it does not tell voters a compelling story about its plans for Government.

“Storytelling matters enormously for the success of any government,” said the former Liberal Democrat leader, as he spoke at an Institute for Government event in central London.

The coalition government, in which Sir Nick served between 2010 and 2015, managed to tell a “compelling story” at first, he said, but events “washed over us”.

Sir Nick added: “Labour should pay heed lest they commit a similar error. If you are running a government, you must, above all, have a clear story about where the country has come from, where it is, and where you want it to go.”

Ministers are having a difficult time justifying cuts to welfare and the winter fuel payment, as well as tightened Government spending limits, because they spent years insisting “fiscal discipline is morally repugnant” while in opposition, the former deputy prime minister added.

Sir Nick, who recently stood down as an executive of Facebook’s parent company Meta, added: “It would be easier to have some sympathy with the decisions the Labour Government has made in recent months on welfare reform, increasing tuition fees, on local government funding, on departmental spending limits, if they hadn’t been so insufferably sanctimonious in condemning similar measures during the coalition.

“This is what happens when you appear to have few bedrock principles about the balance of spending and borrowing, and instead flip almost overnight from condemning fiscal orthodoxy to becoming its hapless prisoner.”