If an election were held today, the governing left-wing Labour Party would lose its majority and nearly 200 seats in parliament in large part due to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, an analysis has found.
Despite sweeping to a landslide victory less than six months ago, analysis conducted by the More in Common think tank has found that support for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has dwindled to such an extent that it would lose at least 183 seats in the House of Commons and therefore lose its majority in the parliament.
The so-called “mega-poll” conducted on behalf of London’s Sunday Times further predicted that seven current cabinet ministers would be ousted from their seats, six of whom would fall to candidates from Nigel Farage’s Reform party.
According to the analysis, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Defence Secretary John Healey, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds would all lose to Reform challengers. Meanwhile Health Secretary Wes Streeting is also predicted to lose to an independent, having just narrowly won out in July over a pro-Gaza candidate.
In total, the constituency-by-constituency survey of over 11,000 people found that Labour would only win 228 seats if the vote were held today; a stunning decline from the 411 the left-wing party won over the summer.
Crucially, this would fall well below the 326 seats needed to hold a majority in the parliament and, therefore, to cling on to power Labour would need to build a European-style coalition government. However, its natural ally, the Liberal Democrats, are only predicted to win 58 seats, which combined with Labour would still fall below the threshold for a majority, likely meaning a hung parliament.
Meanwhile, the survey showed large gains for Nigel Farage’s Reform party, jumping from just five members of parliament now to 72, enough to make it the third largest party in the House of Commons.
“Since July, Labour has lost a big chunk of support in a very short time, Conservative recovery so far has been narrowly with core votes, Reform have real momentum, the SNP are benefiting from Labour woes and the Lib Dems are likely to be very resilient,” UK director of More in Common Luke Tyrl said.
With the next scheduled election not until 2029 and no prospect of an early snap election on the horizon, Reform will have a lot of time to continue to grow. The current model from the pollster said that the party is on course for significant gains in areas like South Yorkshire, North Nottinghamshire, Greater Manchester, and in Wales. The survey firm also noted that it Reform is already polling in second place in 206 seats, suggesting that it is possible for Reform to perform far better than is currently predicted.
Nevertheless, the poll will likely serve as another boon for the Farage party, which over the Christmas holiday surpassed the number of paid party member of the so-called Conservative Party.
The poll comes amid another survey from More in Common, which found growing pessimism about the ability of Starmer and his leftist government to improve the country. Half of Britons said that they believed the country will fare worse in 2025 than it did in 2024, while just 23 per cent said they thought the country would improve under Labour. Around one in three thought that Starmer would be forced to resign at some point over the coming year, but the British system means he would simply be replaced by a party colleague, rather than fresh national elections being triggered.