Tories in freefall as celebration’s lead over Reform UK drops in newest ballot

Rishi Sunak’s Tories are in freefall as a new poll today shows the party’s lead over Reform UK has collapsed by four points.

The Mirror’s weekly election survey by Whitestone Insight finds that Conservative support has fallen by three points to a meagre 19%. Reform UK are now just two points behind the governing party on 17%. Last week our survey gave the Tories a six-point lead over the party led by Nigel Farage.

Meanwhile Labour is on 41% – a staggering 22-point lead over the Conservatives – putting Keir Starmer on course for a landslide victory next month. It follows a devastating YouGov survey for Mr Sunak which found Reform UK had leapfrogged the Tories in a national poll for the first time ever.

Mr Farage said at a press conference in London today the YouGov poll was an “inflexion point” and said the Tory brand is “broken, it’s done, it’s gone”. He also jokingly labelled himself as “leader of the opposition” against Labour as Tory support collapses.

Earlier today Mr Sunak attempted to shake-off Tory panic at being overtaken by Mr Farage’s party as he claimed the election was not a done deal. Speaking to reporters at the G7 summit in Italy, he said: “We’re only halfway through this election right? So I’m still fighting very hard for every vote.

“I always say the poll that matters is the one on July 4 – but if that poll was replicated on July 4, it would be handing Labour a blank cheque to tax everyone.Tax their home, their pension, their car, their family, and I’ll be fighting very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Asked if this election was “existential” for the Tories, he said: “I think at the end of the day on July 5, one of two people’s going to be Prime Minister – Keir Starmer or me – and this week the most important thing that happened was you saw both major parties manifestos that’s their programme for government if they were elected.

“So now everyone has a very clear sense of what each of us would do and as you saw from our manifesto, as we were discussing yesterday, say what you want about it, but it’s a very clear plan, a detailed set of bold actions.”

Mr Sunak left the campaign trail behind to jet to Puglia for the G7 summit on Thursday, for what could be his last major global gathering as PM. He told reporters yesterday that he was “definitely not” down in the dumps after a bruising TV leaders debate in Grimsby on Wednesday night. A snap poll after the Sky News clash handed victory to Mr Starmer.

Lachlan Rurlander of Whitestone Insight said: “These results show that Rishi Sunak’s narrative of ‘the plan is working’ is not cutting through to voters.”

Whitestone Insight interviewed 2014 GB adults online between 12th and 13th June 2024. Data were weighted to be representative of all adults.