Labour has plummeted to just 16% in the polls in the latest blow for Sir Keir Starmer. Support for the governing party has plunged to new lows, with the latest YouGov survey showing Reform rising to 24%, up 1%.
It comes as the Government has faced mounting criticism over cost-of-living pressures and questions over the Prime Minister’s leadership. Restore Britain, a splinter party founded by MP Rupert Lowe after he was turfed out of Reform, has entered the polling on 4%. Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party also makes it onto the poll for the first time, with 1% of nationwide support.
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The Green Party has taken a knock in the latest survey, falling 3% to 16%, but is now neck and neck with Labour. Leader Zack Polansk has positioned his party as a Left-wing alternative to Labour, urging for a more compassionate approach to migration as well as higher taxes on the super-rich.
The poll, conducted by YouGov for The Sunday Times and Sky News, is the latest to show Reform UK in first place, meaning the party has now topped the polls for months.
The Conservatives now hold second place on 19%, with a majority for either party at the next general election unlikely based on the current numbers.
Mr Lowe welcomed the poll as an “enormous step forward” for Restore Britain, which was officially registered just a fortnight ago.
He added: “It is clear that there is significant support out there for Restore Britain – other polling companies must now do the fair thing and include us.”
All parties face an electoral challenge at the local elections on May 7. Reform UK hopes to make substantial gains, with polls predicting they could be the largest party in the Welsh Senedd, and even knock the Tories down a position in Scotland.
The Greens are also looking to make gains, with Mr Polanski suggesting they will be targeting high-profile seats in London.
Devastating new poll shows Labour sinking even lower
A new opinion poll has placed Labour at the centre of another closely fought contest at Westminster, with the party holding a narrow lead over both Reform UK and the Conservatives.
The latest figures underline how fragmented British politics has become. Rather than one party dominating the field, the three largest parties are separated by only a handful of percentage points, while the Greens and Liberal Democrats also retain significant levels of support.
The headline claim that Labour is “sinking even lower” therefore needs some context. In the latest YouGov poll, conducted on September 20 and 21 among 2,286 respondents, Labour was actually on 23 per cent, while Reform UK and the Conservatives were both on 21 per cent. The figures show a highly competitive three-way race rather than Labour collapsing behind its main rivals.
Nevertheless, the poll contains several findings that will concern Labour strategists, particularly when compared with the party’s position at the 2024 general election.
Labour holds a narrow lead
The latest YouGov numbers put Labour at 23 per cent, two points ahead of both Reform UK and the Conservatives.
Reform fell two points to 21 per cent, while the Conservatives increased by one point to the same level. The Greens were on 14 per cent, up three points, and the Liberal Democrats were on 12 per cent, down one point. Restore Britain was recorded at 4 per cent.
These numbers are voting-intention measurements, not predictions of what would happen at a future general election.
They also sit within the normal uncertainty associated with opinion polling. Small movements between parties can fall within a poll’s margin of error, meaning that a two-point difference should not automatically be interpreted as a meaningful change in public opinion.
Even so, the broader pattern is notable: Labour remains ahead, but its advantage is modest, while Reform and the Conservatives are both within striking distance in the polling figures.
Reform’s position has changed
One of the most significant movements in the latest survey is the decline recorded for Reform UK.
The party’s 21 per cent represents its joint-lowest level in YouGov polling since the general election, according to reporting on the survey. Reform had previously reached substantially higher levels of support in some national polls, making the latest result notable for Nigel Farage’s party as well as for Labour.
The poll comes after a period of controversy surrounding Reform’s finances and political donations.
The Independent reported that the party had faced allegations concerning foreign funding rules and that police had launched an investigation following an undercover Channel 4 report in which senior Reform figures were allegedly shown discussing political donations. Reform has rejected wrongdoing.
Those developments provide one possible context for the movement in Reform’s polling numbers, although polling alone cannot establish why individual voters changed their intentions.
The Conservative recovery is also significant.
For the first time in around 18 months, YouGov recorded the Conservatives level with Reform. The result provides Kemi Badenoch’s party with evidence of increased support compared with earlier stages of the year, although the Conservatives remain only two points behind Labour in the same survey.
Labour’s position under Andy Burnham
The latest polling comes after a major change in Labour’s leadership.
Andy Burnham became prime minister after Keir Starmer’s departure, creating a new political phase for the governing party.
Several polls conducted since the leadership change have shown Labour’s position improving in some measures.
Ipsos, for example, surveyed voters between September 10 and 15 and found Labour on 29 per cent, four points ahead of Reform UK on 25 per cent. The Conservatives were on 19 per cent, according to the poll.
That result differs noticeably from the latest YouGov figures.
The difference is a reminder that individual polls can produce different results depending on methodology, fieldwork dates, sample composition and question wording.
Rather than treating one survey as definitive, analysts generally look at several polls over time to identify broader trends.
The latest figures nevertheless show that Labour’s position is competitive but far from dominant.
Tactical voting provides another perspective
A separate YouGov study published on September 23 provides additional information about how voters might behave in hypothetical two-party constituency contests.
This is different from asking voters which party they currently intend to support nationally.
In a constituency where only Labour and Reform UK were considered capable of winning, 41 per cent said they would back Labour compared with 26 per cent for Reform. YouGov said Labour’s advantage in this scenario had widened since February.
The same survey found the Conservatives ahead of Reform in a hypothetical Conservative-Reform contest, with 35 per cent compared with 20 per cent.
In a Labour-Conservative head-to-head, Labour was also ahead, 34 per cent to 27 per cent.
These figures should not be confused with a prediction of parliamentary seats.
They illustrate how voters say they might behave if only two parties were realistically competitive in a particular constituency. Tactical voting can produce very different patterns from a standard national voting-intention question.
Why the electoral map is complicated
Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system means that national vote share does not translate directly into parliamentary seats.
A party can receive a substantial percentage of votes nationwide without winning a proportional number of seats, while geographically concentrated support can produce a different parliamentary outcome.
That makes the current three-way contest particularly difficult to interpret.
Labour, Reform and the Conservatives may all have areas where their support is stronger than the national average. The Greens and Liberal Democrats can also have concentrated support in particular constituencies.
Consequently, a national poll showing the three largest parties within two points of one another does not by itself reveal how the next Parliament would be composed.
It simply provides a snapshot of public voting intentions at the time respondents were surveyed.
The Greens are also moving
Another striking feature of the latest YouGov survey is the increase recorded by the Green Party.
The Greens reached 14 per cent, three points higher than in the previous poll. That puts them ahead of the Liberal Democrats, who were recorded at 12 per cent.
The rise is significant because it illustrates the extent to which the British electorate has become fragmented.
Labour is therefore not simply competing with the Conservatives and Reform. It is also facing competition from parties on its left, particularly in constituencies where Green support has become established.
The separate YouGov tactical-voting study suggested that Green voters could play an important role in hypothetical Labour-Reform contests. Sixty-three per cent of current Green voters said they would support Labour if Labour and Reform were the only realistic contenders in their constituency.
That does not mean those voters would necessarily abandon the Greens in an actual election. Tactical voting intentions are conditional on a specific scenario.
What the polling can—and cannot—tell us
The latest numbers offer several pieces of information, but they do not answer every political question.
They show Labour narrowly ahead in one YouGov survey. They show Reform and the Conservatives tied. They show the Greens rising and the Liberal Democrats slipping.
Other recent polling has produced different results, with Ipsos putting Labour four points ahead of Reform in its September survey.
That variation is important.
A single poll can be affected by sampling and normal statistical uncertainty. Political circumstances can also change rapidly, particularly following a change of prime minister or major political controversy.
The safest interpretation is therefore that Labour currently occupies a competitive position while facing strong challenges from several directions.
A difficult political landscape
For Labour, the latest poll contains both positive and negative elements.
The party remains ahead of its two closest rivals in the YouGov survey. It has also performed better in some recent polls following the change of leadership.
But a 23 per cent voting intention figure would represent a very different political environment from the one Labour faced when it won the 2024 general election.
Reform remains a major force despite its recent decline in the YouGov numbers, while the Conservatives have recovered to 21 per cent. The Greens’ 14 per cent also demonstrates that Labour faces competition beyond the traditional Conservative opposition.
For Reform, meanwhile, the latest figures represent a period in which its support has fallen from some of the higher levels recorded previously.
For the Conservatives, drawing level with Reform gives the party a new point of comparison as it seeks to rebuild support.
And for voters, the figures demonstrate just how unsettled British politics remains.
The phrase “Labour sinking even lower” captures the dramatic tone of the political debate, but the polling data tell a more nuanced story. Labour is not at the bottom of the latest national table; it is actually first, albeit narrowly. The more important fact is the lack of a large gap between the three biggest parties.
With Labour on 23 per cent and both Reform and the Conservatives on 21 per cent in the latest YouGov survey, the political landscape remains highly fragmented.
That is the central message of the new polling: not that one party has already determined the future shape of British politics, but that support is divided among several competing parties and that relatively small changes in public opinion can alter the picture from one survey to another.
As the parties prepare for their respective conference seasons, the next polls will be watched closely—not as predictions of an eventual election result, but as measurements of how voters are responding to a rapidly changing political landscape.
