Nigel Farage is on course to be prime minister, according to a seat-by-seat YouGov poll which reveals the scale of Conservative implosion.

The YouGov MRP polling projection, based on a 13,000 sample taken over the last three weeks, suggests an election held tomorrow would see a hung parliament with Reform UK winning 311 of the 650 seats, 15 seats short of the formal winning line of 326.

In practice, once the Speaker and absent Sinn Fein MPs are accounted for, it would be all but impossible for anyone other than Mr Farage to secure the largest number of MP backers and thus become prime minister.

Reform UK has improved its position since the last YouGov MRP in June, when it was 55 seats short of a majority. The projection suggests 306 Reform gains, up from their current seat tally of five, which would be the biggest increase in any election in British history.

The projection of Commons seats in Great Britain puts Reform UK on 311 seats, Labour on 144 seats, Liberal Democrats on 78 seats, Conservatives on 45 seats, SNP on 37 seats and Greens on seven seats, with Plaid on six seats and three seats won by left-wing challengers.

Barely a year after Keir Starmer won a landslide, this result would see Labour lose around two-thirds of their existing seats, down from the 411 they won in last year’s general election.

This is significantly worse than the party’s 2019 result under Jeremy Corbyn when the party won 202 seats and is their lowest tally since 1931.

More than a third of Labour’s remaining seats would be in London, making them more reliant on London than any other British party is on any other nation or region.

Among the big-name casualties would be Yvette Cooper, Wes Streeting, Ed Miliband, Bridget Phillipson, Lisa Nandy and Angela Rayner.

The Conservatives would fare even worse, pushed potentially to the brink of extinction. They would lose two-thirds of their 121 seats won last year – which was already their worst result in their 190-year modern history – reducing their tally to 45 seats.

And even further back, it would be worse than any result they’ve ever suffered, all the way back to the formation of their predecessor party, the Tory Party in the 1670s.

This would put the Tories in fourth place behind the Lib Dems, and the first time they have not been one of the two biggest parties.

The Conservatives would be wiped out in both Wales and the South West, a heartland as recently as 2015, and left with just six seats in the north and one in Scotland.

Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel, James Cleverly and Mel Stride could be among the casualties. Almost 60% of their current front bench would lose their seats.

In theory, the Conservatives could line up with Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, Plaid, SNP, progressive left and Northern Ireland MPs to vote down a Farage premiership, but this is highly unlikely in practice. If they abstain, Mr Farage would still have enough MPs to become PM.

The projections suggest national vote shares of 27% for Reform UK, 21% for Labour, 17% for Conservative, 15% for Lib Dems, 11% for Greens, 3% for SNP and 1% for Plaid.

Some smaller, more recent YouGov polls have put the Reform UK total even higher.

The scale of the threat to Labour from Reform UK is laid bare in this MRP projection.

Three-quarters of Reform UK’s seats would come directly from Labour, while more than half of Labour seats would go directly to Reform UK.

The North East of England would be Reform’s strongest area with 21 of the 27 seats, followed by the East Midlands and Wales. Reform’s weakest areas are London, where they would have six out of 75 and Scotland where they would win five out of 57.

Scotland would see a resurgence of the SNP, an increase of 28 seats to 37 seats, with Labour left with nine seats.

This does not suggest Scottish Labour will be able to win control of the Scottish parliament at next year’s elections.

In Wales, Reform would have 23 seats, against Plaid’s six and Labour’s three, which implies there’s a strong likelihood of Labour losing control in the Welsh Sennedd elections next May.

Voters in Great Britain were asked by YouGov how they would vote in the event of an election tomorrow, even though one is not anticipated for three or four years. MRP projections come with a significant margin of error.

The central projection is that Reform UK gets 311 seats, but this could be as high as 342, which would deliver an overall majority, or as low as 271. The Tories could have as few as 28 seats and as high as 68 seats. Labour’s range could be from 118 to 185.

“It was, quite literally, you deserve to be raped, you N-word bitch,” Ella Mitchell tells me, standing in her kitchen, “and I can’t wrap my head around it.”

Warning: This article includes content that some readers may find distressing

Ella, 25, an administrative assistant in Leeds, is recounting her recent experience at an asylum hotel protest.

The abuse she says she’s had from protesters, calling for the hotel to shut, is shocking.

“Threats of sexual violence, rape threats, racial slurs,” she says, shaking her head.

“I think I will always find it a little bit galling to hear people say that they’re doing this to keep people on their streets safe.”

For several weeks now, Ella’s helped organise counter-protests outside the Britannia Hotel in Leeds.

The hotel houses 200 male asylum seekers and protests started in early August, organised under the slogan “Protect Our Kids”.

“We live in a time of immense misogyny and violence against women,” Ella says, but “the only incidences of sexual violence against women that they care about are ones that they can use to further their own agenda, to stir up more hatred around asylum seekers.”

I put it to Ella that there are some people at the protests who wouldn’t call themselves racists or far-right, as some of the counter-protesters claim them to be, but are local residents who feel ignored by the government and angry at small boat arrivals.

“I do understand,” Ella says, “that not every single person there is a seasoned far-right organiser, and I wouldn’t want to claim as such.

“However, if you are stood next to someone who is Sieg Heil-ing [the Hitler salute], for example, or next to someone who is yelling racist abuse, week in, week out, then I think it does reflect on you.

‘They’re angry with the wrong people’

Protests and counter-protests outside asylum hotels have been going on all summer, sparked initially by those that began outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex.

For weeks, we’ve been speaking to people on both sides and found communities starkly divided.

Read more:
Asylum seekers come face-to-face with migrant hotel critics
Protesters on why they oppose asylum hotels
The key numbers driving the immigration debate

“We shouldn’t have to do this, should we?” a counter-protester tells me.

It’s Friday night and we’ve come down to see the Leeds protest for ourselves.

The numbers aren’t huge – a few dozen on both sides, flanked by police – but the rhetoric is aggressive and the atmosphere febrile. Insults are lobbed by people on both sides.

“We shouldn’t have that hatred on this side of road,” Sally Kincaid says, “against people who live on this side of the road.”

Sally, a retired teacher and seasoned protester, has worked with refugee communities for decades.

“I can understand people being angry, but they are angry at the wrong people.

“Refugees are not to blame for the fact that there’s bad housing or overcrowded schools.

“And people keep being told that they’re getting all these things – they’re not! They are just waiting and waiting for the Home Office to make a decision.”

Sally then tells us about Hossein, a young refugee from Iran who she fostered from the age of 15.

“He’s lovely,” Sally says, “and everyone that’s ever met him loves him to bits.

“Now, this lot would say he is a bad person.”

I tell Sally that, from our previous conversations with protesters, we know there are a lot of concerns about safety and rates of crime associated with migrants.

“It’s a myth, it’s a myth,” she says, pointing at protesters on the other side, “and it’s being stirred up to make the situation more polarised than it already is.”

‘There’s a lot of racism around and kids are scared’

A few days later, we go to Sally’s house.

We’d hoped to meet her foster son Hossein, who lived with Sally and her partner, Steve Johnston, for five years after he first arrived in the UK in the back of a freezer van.

Sally and Steve saw Hossein through college, driving tests and, after nearly a decade of waiting, getting British citizenship.

But Hossein isn’t there, and when I ask Sally why, she looks really sad.

“There’s a lot of racism around and kids are scared,” she explains. “That’s the tragedy of it.”

She describes her foster son as someone who “was very, very open on camera a few years ago” but says he is “now worried”.

“The amount of hatred on social media is awful towards refugees, even though he now has status.”

I ask Sally if she finds that painful to admit.

“Yes,” she says, “we sat and watched the TV the other night when [Nigel] Farage was talking about deporting Afghan women, and I just thought what’s going on?

“Why have we got ourselves into this situation where people who desperately want to contribute to society are scared to meet people like you.”

‘I don’t think wearing a dog collar exempts you from abuse’

It’s Friday night and, once again, we’re back outside the Britannia hotel.

Protesters and counter-protesters take their positions on either side of the road, and the chanting and name-calling – amplified on loud hailers and speakers – start being flung across the dual carriageway from both sides.

As we walk along the bank of counter-protesters, I see a man, wearing a dog collar and crucifix and quite clearly a member of the clergy, carrying a tray of homemade cakes.

He offers me one and I ask if they are for both sides of the protest.

“Yes we’ve offered them to both sides, and a sense of peace, in the midst of rising tension.”

I ask him what he means by “rising tension”.

“Well, I was last here three weeks ago, and I think the verbal abuse I got today,” he says, gesturing to the protest side, “is more than I had three weeks ago.”

“So to that extent, it does feel like the tension has raised slightly higher,” he adds.

The man, as it turns out, is Arun Arora, the Bishop of Kirkstall, the most senior member of the Church of England in West Yorkshire.

I ask him if he finds it shocking that someone who, in his words, has come in peace, should be the target of verbal abuse at these protests.

“I don’t think wearing a dog collar exempts you from abuse,” the bishop says.

“I think part of it is if you stand alongside those who are being dehumanised, those who are being degraded, those who are regarded the least, then you can expect to share in some of the same treatment that they get.”

‘Being polite about it doesn’t win’

I scan the crowd and see Ella, escorting groups of counter-protesters from a nearby car park to the meeting point.

She tells me no one walks here alone in case things get violent.

I also see Steve, Sally’s partner.

Like Sally, he’s been involved in the protest movement for years and I ask him about the language we hear being used by the counter-protesters, like chants of “Nazi scum” and “fascist scum, off our streets”.

Does he think it risks making a tense situation even more polarised?

“There are people over there,” he says, gesturing to the protesters on the other side, “who are clearly members of fascist organisations.”

He concedes, when I challenge him, that there will be some who won’t be, but says “by doing these sort of chants, we hope those people will go away and think ‘well why are they calling us Nazis?’

“People have [previously] stopped the rise of fascism by calling it out for what it is.

“Ignoring it or being polite about it doesn’t win.”

Every adult in Britain will require a digital ID under plans to tackle illegal immigration.

Sky News understands that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer could announce his backing for the scheme in a speech as early as Friday.

Politics Live: Andy Burnham says Labour MPs want him to oust Starmer

The so-called “Brit card” would verify a citizen’s right to live and work in the UK.

The plans would require anyone starting a new job or renting a home to show the card on a smartphone app, which would then be checked against a central database of those entitled to work and live here.

It is hoped this would reduce the attraction of working in the UK illegally, including for delivery companies.

At the moment, workers have to show at least one form of physical ID in the form of documents, but there are concerns within government that these can be faked.

French President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly warned that the lack of ID cards in the UK acts as a major pull factor for Channel crossings, as migrants feel they are able to find work in the black economy.

Sir Keir is due to speak at the Global Progress Action Summit in London on Friday, alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

The plan represents a shift in the government’s position, as last year ministers ruled out the idea following an intervention from Sir Tony Blair just days after Labour won the general election.

The former Labour prime minister has long been an advocate of ID cards and took steps to introduce a system that would begin as voluntary and could later become compulsory while in office.

The rollout was scrapped after Labour was ejected from power in 2010, having been opposed by the Liberal Democrats and the Tories at the time.

Last July, then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said of the idea: “It’s not in our manifesto. That’s not our approach.”

The UK has only previously had mandatory ID cards during wartime, with the last tranche scrapped in 1952.

The idea has long been opposed by civil liberty and privacy groups in the UK.

Sir Keir is said to have shared their concerns but came round to the idea amid record high levels of small boat crossings.

A report by the Tony Blair Institute published on Wednesday said digital ID can “help close loopholes that trafficking gangs and unscrupulous employers currently exploit, reducing pull factors driving illegal migration to Britain and restoring control over borders”.

Labour Together, a Starmer-backed thinktank, published a report in June which said digital ID could play a role in right-to-work and right-to-rent checks, supporting “better enforcement of migration rules”.

How would digital ID work?

There is no unique regime for identity cards, but decisions the government would have to make include who is required to register, how much information they should hold, and whether physical forms of the ID should also be made available.

Pat McFadden, now the work and pensions secretary, started a cross-government unit to look at how it could work while he was in charge of the cabinet office.

He visited Estonia last month, before the cabinet reshuffle, where he said the Baltic country’s model could be used as an example.

In Estonia, citizens are given a unique number at birth which they use to register marriages, access bank accounts, vote, book GP appointments, file their tax return and even collect supermarket loyalty points, among hundreds of other services.

Mr McFadden told The Times digital ID could be applied “to the immigration system, to the benefit system, to a number of areas”.

‘Checkpoint society’

The government’s plan will be subject to a consultation and would require legislation to be passed, before being rolled out.

Labour MPs on the left of the party have already hit out at the idea.

Nadia Whittome labelled the policy “divisive, authoritarian nonsense”, adding: “If we’re going to reheat Blair-era policies, can we please focus on lifting children out of poverty?”

Reform UK and the Tories are also against the proposal, arguing it will not stop small boat crossings.

The Lib Dems meanwhile said they were against the principle of people being “forced to turn over their private data just to go about their daily lives”.

The civil liberty group Big Brother Watch said: “Plans for a mandatory digital ID would make us all reliant on a digital pass to go about our daily lives, turning us into a checkpoint society that is wholly unBritish.”