Politics LIVE: Reform UK boasts of surge in support as Labour voters ‘flee to Farage in droves’ – ‘We will beat Starmer!’
Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf has boasted about the populist party’s soaring support in opinion polls as Labour voters appear to have flocked to Farage – just over 100 days into Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership.
Responding to a recent poll of polls putting Reform UK up six points on 20 per cent, Yusuf said: “Labour voters are fleeing in their droves to Reform. Not the Tories. Only Reform can beat Labour. And we will.”
The polling averages have placed Reform UK is just five points behind the effectively leaderless Tories – who, alongside Farage’s party, are the only ones trending up – and nine points behind Starmer’s faltering Labour.
Yusuf, who was last month instructed to democratise and professionalise Reform UK, also shared separate polls showing the populist party as more popular than Labour.
Directly addressing Reform UK’s support in Wales, Yusuf warned: “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
Yusuf’s comments come as Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick prepare to lock horns tonight at 7pm on GB News for Decision Time: The Race to Lead – live on The People’s Channel.
Despite Jenrick and Badenoch both hoping to thwart the rise of Reform UK, a new opinion poll has suggested Farage could make large gains if either succeed Rishi Sunak as Tory leader.
The situation prompted former Conservative MP Miriam Cates to urge her former colleagues to “swallow their pride” by entering a pact with Reform UK.
Writing in ConservativeHome, Cates said: “It is easy to dismiss Farage as merely a ‘populist’ – and certainly the Reform UK manifesto this year was a feast of fantasy policies – but this challenger party is rapidly professionalising and building infrastructure, and there is no reason to believe that their advances will be reversed.”
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Education Secretary warns of ‘tough choices’ to come – but can’t resist swipe at Sunak
Ministers will have to “make some really tough choices” ahead of the Budget, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has warned.
Asked about the revolt from within that the Prime Minister is facing over cuts to multiple departments’ spending, and whether this marks a return to austerity, Phillipson told Times Radio that “we’ve got to fix the problems that we’ve inherited”.
She was firm that there will be “no return to austerity”, but joined a raft of Labour’s top brass in blaming the previous Government as she added: “We do, all of us, have to make some really tough choices because of the inheritance… given to us by the Conservatives.”
She also lashed out at prison overcrowding, and accused Rishi Sunak of not being “prepared to confront that difficult choice”.
The Education Secretary added: “We’ve got to fix the problems that we’ve inherited but we want to make sure that we’re delivering on the commitments that we made: Making sure that there are more jobs, more opportunities, a growing economy.”
Tens of thousands of migrants could be handed asylum under Labour scheme to ‘clear the backlog’
More than 62,000 migrants could be granted asylum in Britain as part of Labour’s plans to clear the backlog of claims waiting to be dealt with.
The number of asylum claims still waiting to be processed could stand at 118,063 by January after Labour controversially scrapped plans to send migrants to Rwanda and started processing applications again.
Analysis of official data, based on grant rates in the year to June, indicates as many as 62,801 more people could be recognised as refugees in the UK, according to migrant charity the Refugee Council.
The charity’s chief executive, Enver Solomon, said: “People seeking asylum need quick decisions so they can feel secure about their future in Britain, while the public needs to feel confident that the Government is making fair decisions about who can stay in the UK and who cannot.”
The charity also said the research suggests the total backlog at the start of next year could be as much as 59,000 lower than at the time of the July election and if no action had been taken to change Government policy.
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A reminder that at 7pm tonight on GB News, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick will be going head-to-head on Decision Time: The Race to Lead – READ MORE HERE