But none of this is guaranteed to work. Voters opted for “change” last year — it was Labour’s one-word election slogan. They have yet to feel it, as Starmer himself acknowledged. It’s not clear that they will be willing to wait, with cynicism apparently on the rise.
As the British Election Study found, Labour’s 2024 landslide came amid high levels of political alienation with one in three voters saying they have “no trust” in politicians.
That kind of attitude makes a fragmented electoral landscape even more volatile. In the space of five years, British voters veered wildly from giving a huge majority of 80 seats to Boris Johnson’s Tories, to ejecting them from office with their worst ever result and handing a massive landslide of 174 seats to Starmer’s Labour Party.
According to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, there is no clear favorite for the next election. Reform UK is currently on 26 per cent, with Labour on 24 per cent and the Conservatives on 21 per cent. Could Farage convert this position into a realistic bid for Downing Street?
Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, is skeptical of Reform’s chances of winning power nationally at the next general election in 2029. “I suspect that, on their own, there’s still a ceiling to their support given how poorly Farage is regarded by most Brits, given the likelihood that some of the people currently winning all these seats for them will end up embarrassing him, and given they might not be able to match Labour’s (and the Lib Dems’) ground game,” Bale said.
“That said, I wouldn’t completely rule it out — what sort of results ‘first past the post’ might throw up if both Labour and the Tories remain phenomenally unpopular and we have, say, four parties getting 20 per cent or so, who knows?”
Noah Keate contributed reporting.