The current state of British politics
Today, the “Observer” newspaper carries the results of a political opinion poll just carried out by Opinium. The results are disturbing.
The poll shows Labour on 27%, Reform UK on 26% and the Tories on 22%. The Liberal Democrats are on 11% and the Greens on 8%. Reform has risen from about 20% since shortly after the last General Election.
Of course, the next General Election does not need to be held for over four years, but it is is remarkable that, just seven months after Labour stormed to victory with a huge majority, the Party and Reform are effectively (allowing for the margin of error) neck-and-neck.
In fact, roughy speaking, we have three political parties with around a quarter of the electorate supporting them and the remaining quarter split between various smaller parties.
Since we have a first-past-the-post system of election, this effectively means that anything could happen in an election now: it would depend where party supporters were geographically and what was their commitment to actually turning out and voting.
In recent elections, both in the UK and in other democratic countries, voters have shown an astonishing capacity to switch their votes so, in short, everything is still to play for.
The Opinium poll suggests that, among those backing Reform, 37% say that they do so because of its hardline policies on immigration and border controls.
If this is true, it begs the questions: What would a Labour Government need to do in order to win over voters worried about immigration? Would any level of illegal or even legal migration satisfy them? How much does it matter if these migrants are from countries where the majority is Muslim or Black?
But maybe anger about immigration is not the real cause of Reform’s rise in the polls. Maybe it is that migrants are a convenient scapegoat for a deeper concern about declining living standards, poor housing and a general feeling of disempowerment.
In which case, the performance of the economy – or at least how that performance is perceived by swing voters – will be crucial. Currently the economy seems to be stagnating, but there’s time for it to become better – or worse.