Reform UK leads the Conservative Party on a number of key indicators, Sky News poll finds
Tories trail Reform UK on a range of key indicators according to an exclusive new YouGov poll for Sky News that reveals Nigel Farage’s party now has the potential to reach as much of the electorate as the party run by Kemi Badenoch.
Detailed comparisons of voter opinion towards the Tories and Reform UK reveal that profound damage to the Tory brand is still evident, while the figures suggest that the new challenger party which has topped recent voting intention polls has the capacity to perform at least as well.
This brand testing is helpful so early in a parliament when distinctive policy programmes have not been set out by other parties.
Sky News deputy political editor Sam Coates takes a look at polling for the UK’s leading right-wing parties
Sky News and YouGov tested the Tories and Reform on a string of key positive and negative measurements.
Only 10% of voters currently see the Tories as strong, while 61% see them as weak.
Reform UK does much better on this measure, with 31% of voters calling Reform UK strong, and 27% weak. This means three times as many voters see Reform as strong as the Tories.
There is a similar gap over whether both parties have a sense of direction. Only 18% of voters say they think the Conservatives have a clear sense of purpose, 59% say that’s unclear.
However, the figures are different with Reform UK, and more positive, 49% say it has a clear sense of purpose, only 24% say they are unclear on what the party stands for.
That means voters are more than twice as likely to see Reform UK as having a clear direction when compared to the Tories.
The gap is smaller when it comes to trust, though Reform UK still does better than the Tories.
Only 11% say the Tories are trustworthy, 65% say they’re untrustworthy. Again the Reform figures are higher, although by less than others – 19% say they are trustworthy, 52% untrustworthy
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Back 10 years ago, when Nigel Farage led UKIP, some thought he or the party brand was potentially too toxic to lead or for him to become prime minister.
They believed there might be a ceiling on his support that was lower than the pool of potential Tory voters.
But how has that picture changed now he’s leading the new party Reform UK?
One way to measure this is to compare the proportion of the electorate who say they would never vote Tory – those who definitely rule it out – with the proportion that would never vote Reform UK.
Some 56% say they definitely would not vote Reform UK – leaving a potential pool of voters of 44%. But an almost identical figure say they would never vote Tory – 55% – meaning their potential pool of voters is 45%, within the margin of error.
This means there is no discernable lower ceiling on Reform UK than the Tories.
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Voters on the right look more likely to switch from Tory to Reform than the other way around.
Among people who voted Reform UK in the election, some 46% can rule out voting Tory.
However among Conservative voters in last year’s general election, that drops to 36%.
Some 24% of Tory voters last year “will” or “might” vote for Reform UK now, while 8% of Reform voters “will” or “might” vote Tory.
Politics
Norman Tebbit: Former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, the former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died at the age of 94.
Lord Tebbit died “peacefully at home” late on Monday night, his son William confirmed.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s most loyal cabinet ministers, he was a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s.
He held the posts of employment secretary, trade secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative party chairman before resigning as an MP in 1992 after his wife was left disabled by the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He considered standing for the Conservative leadership after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation in 1990, but was committed to taking care of his wife.
Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit in 1987 after her election victory. Pic: PA
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him an “icon” in British politics and was “one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism”.
“But to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism, which inspired us as he rebuilt his political career after suffering terrible injuries in the Brighton bomb, and cared selflessly for his wife Margaret, who was gravely disabled in the bombing,” she wrote on X.
“He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised. Our nation has lost one of its very best today and I speak for all the Conservative family and beyond in recognising Lord Tebbit’s enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country.
“May he rest in peace.”
Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret stand outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Pic: PA
Tory grandee David Davis told Sky News Lord Tebbit was a “great working class Tory, always ready to challenge establishment conventional wisdom for the bogus nonsense it often was”.
“He was one of Thatcher’s bravest and strongest lieutenants, and a great friend,” Sir David said.
“He had to deal with the agony that the IRA visited on him and his wife, and he did so with characteristic unflinching courage. He was a great man.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage said Lord Tebbit “gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP”.
He was “a great man. RIP,” he added.
Lord Tebbit as employment secretary in 1983 with Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Born to working-class parents in north London, he was made a life peer in 1992, where he sat until he retired in 2022.
Lord Tebbit was trade secretary when he was injured in the Provisional IRA’s bombing in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984.
Five people died in the attack and Lord Tebbit’s wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. She died in 2020 at the age of 86.
Before entering politics, his first job, aged 16, was at the Financial Times where he had his first experience of trade unions and vowed to “break the power of the closed shop”.
He then trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a Meteor 8 jet – before becoming the MP for Epping in 1970 then for Chingford in 1974.
Lord Tebbit during an EU debate in the House of Lords in 1997. Pic: PA
As a cabinet minister, he was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.
His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the black community and the police.
He was frequently misquoted as having told the unemployed to “get on your bike”, and was often referred to as “Onyerbike” for some time afterwards.
What he actually said was he grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father who did not riot, “he got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.
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