Reform UK has been declining in the polls in recent months following ongoing turbulence for the party
Reform UK has dropped back to third place behind Labour and the Tories for the first time since the general election, after Kemi Badenoch received a polling boost in the wake of her party’s conference.
The new polling, conducted by YouGov for The Times, put the Tories on 23 points – an increase of three points and the party’s highest rating since Ms Badenoch became leader.
Reform’s support, meanwhile, fell by one point to 21 per cent, level with its lowest score in a YouGov poll since they re-started polling after the 2024 general election.
Labour’s support also declined, dropping by three points to 24 per cent – a similar level to where the party was after Mr Burnham took over as party leader.
The Liberal Democrats were up by one point on 12 per cent, while the Greens’ support remained unchanged on 11 per cent.
The boost in support for Ms Badenoch’s party comes after she vowed to abolish inheritance tax on family homes, using her speech at the Conservatives’ annual conference in Birmingham to position them as the party of aspiration again.
Promising to let voters “keep more of what they earn” if her party returns to power, the Conservative leader also said she would allow a couple to leave £1m to their children tax-free, on top of the value of their home.
The move would mean the number of families paying inheritance tax will fall by more than half, Ms Badenoch said as she accused Labour of being “addicted to welfare” and treating income and savings as “theirs to take and hand out.”
Reform UK has been declining in the polls in recent months following ongoing turbulence for the party.
Although it made gains in the devolved and local elections this May, the party has since become bogged down in controversies over donations to Nigel Farage, has faced competition on its right from Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain, and has lost its lead in voting intention polls since Andy Burnham took office.
Meanwhile, Mr Farage‘s individual popularity has also reached a record low.
A YouGov poll published last month shows that almost seven in ten Britons (69 per cent) say they have an unfavourable opinion of the Reform leader – the highest figure recorded by YouGov’s tracker for Mr Farage in the ten years it has run.
This includes nearly six in ten Britons (57 per cent) seeing Mr Farage very unfavourably, while just 24 per cent have a favourable opinion of the Reform UK leader.
As a result, Mr Farage had a net favourability rating of -45, identical to Sir Keir Starmer’s score just before his resignation as prime minister. This is down from a rating of -31 on year previously, with Britons now nearly three times as likely to see him negatively than positively.
To make matters worse for Mr Farage, a major donations scandal completely overshadowed what he hoped would be a significant comeback speech at Reform’s party conference in Birmingham at the start of September.
Allegations that the party arranged illegal donations led to the resignation of Mr Farage’s chief of staff and longtime aide Dan Jukes, as well as policy director James Orr.
With the conference framed around Reform’s plans for its “first 100 days” in government, the discussion was knocked off course as Mr Farage was instead forced to answer questions on whether he could bounce back from another scandal.
The latest YouGov poll spoke to 2,393 adults between October 11 and 12.
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