Sir John Curtice Explains Reform's Fall In Support!

Hi guys, I don't know about you, but I love Sir John Curtis, the polling expert, because he lays it out as it is and he doesn't pick sides.So I want to show you this clip here where he was interviewed on Talk TV about the rise of Andy Burnham's Labour Party and the collapse of Nigel Farage's reform.Now, it seems that the rise of one is resulting in the collapse of the other, but that's not entirely the case, as Sir John Curtis points out.Have a listen.

So that's point one.Labour definitely up nothing spectacular.It's what you would expect.And they are still only at 25%, which is the lowest share of the vote in the polls for any incoming Prime Minister becoming Prime Minister in the middle of a parliament.But it's also true that support for reform is done independently of Labour's rise, which is predominantly, particularly the polls in the last week, are essentially saying that what Labour are doing with the Vernon Bounce is squeezing the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and not so much reform.But you can pinpoint it very, very clearly.

Immediately before The first stories appeared about Nigel Farage and Reform's financial affairs.And the day when Nigel Farage announced he was resigning as an MP and precipitating the collective by -election, at that point, when he made that announcement, Reform were running at 27 percent.The polls immediately afterwards saw Reform fall down to 24 percent.They're now running at about 25.And the truth is, it's therefore not just been relatively good news for Andy Burnham.It's also been relatively good news for the Conservatives, because they are now losing somewhat less support to reform than they were a month ago, and they've got themselves to 20%.

Now, nothing very spectacular, but it's the first time for a year that the Tories have managed an average of 20 % in the opinion polls.So there is a separate story about Nigel Farage and reform.there's also another story about Labour and Burnham.

It's interesting, you always said that reform had peaked.I remember when we were talking and they were at 32 or 35 % these latest polls, bringing them down, as you said.Some would say that's natural, reform supporters.The Tories, as you quite rightly say, would would be saying, look, there's no doubt Kemi is cutting through, but maybe now, for the first time in two years, three years, the Tory party as an entity are proving more popular.You've got the Farage thing about Clacton.In terms of reform, can they get it back, or is that slide permanent in your mind, my friend?

Well, I mean, I think it's definitely in politics.You know, the truth is that it does look as though reform have been damaged by the various media stories surrounding them.We have to see how they come out.We have to wait and see when, assuming Mr Farage does win the Clapton by -election and the parliamentary inquiry into what he did and didn't declare comes to a conclusion, whether or not any of the investigations instigated by the police, whether any of this goes anywhere or not.But in the meantime, certainly for some voters at least it seems to be a little bit of a bad smell and certainly Nigel Farage's personal popularity is down and reform are very heavily dependent on his ability to cut through to the electorate but you know a reform can trust that none of this ends up going anywhere that in the meantime the Labour Party finds it difficult to maintain the balance that they've so currently achieved under Andy Burnham that Kemi Betanok doesn't make much progress and reform therefore edge back up again I mean it There's nothing inevitable in politics.But sure, it does mean that for the first time, these two things together, that on average, labor and reform, they're both at 25%.

And this is the first time when a collection of pollssuggests that reform no longer have a lead over everybody else.But it does, of course, mean our politics are still extremely fragmented.Greens now down to 11%.I was going to say.Yeah, I was going to say.

very sharp decline in green support but the lowest we've got the Liberal Democrats and the Greens at 11 % and at the top we've got Labour and Reform at 25%.

So what we can take from this are a number of things.I'll leave a link in the description if you want to watch the entire interview with Sir John Kershaw, I do recommend watching it.But I just wanted to focus on the main point here.The media tend to focus on this idea that, well, if Andy Burnham is on the rise and Reform are on the decline, well, those two things are connected.And as Sir John Curtis has pointed out, it's really the Liberal Democrats and the Greens who are suffering as a result of the recovery that Labour are seeing.Not so much Reform.

Reform's story is separate to a certain extent.Reform's problem is also their greatest asset, Nigel Farage.And I've been saying this for some time.People who jump ship from the Conservatives to reform will be happy to come back to the Conservatives if they're not happy with what Nigel Farage is doing.And Nigel Farage is creating, I believe, permanent damage to Reform UK.Because even if he is able to come out of these investigations smelling like a rose, there are still a lot of things that are going to damage him.

He's not somebody who's willing to stand up and answer questions.You know, you're going to see more and more investigations.If it's not in Parliament, we're going to see it by journalists.And Nigel Farage is not very good at defending himself.And the more allegations there are, the more corruption that comes out, the more damaging it will be to Farage.And Farage is now less popular.

Reform UK.Now under normal circumstances when a leader is less popular than the party what happens?Well the party gets rid of the leader.We saw it with Keir Starmer and we saw what happened when Keir Starmer was removed.Even the polling started to improve for Labour when it became clear that Keir Starmer was no longer going to lead the Labour Party.Labour started to benefit from that.

But Farage and Reform is a different kettle of fish because Reform don't have a mechanism to remove the leader.The people who are in Reform, all these members, they're not really members, they're subscribers.And they have no way of removing Farage.And Nigel Farage would have to go voluntarily.You can't have a leadership contest to remove him because it's like a company.It's like a dictatorship in Reform.

I don't know whether people know about that, but they'll soon find out.People who may think, maybe we should remove Nigel Farage, replace him with somebody else, well, they're going to find it very difficult, if not impossible.Now, on the other side, Labour are doing well.for the same reason that Labour were doing badly, in a sense, when it came to the leader.Labour are doing well now because they have a new leader.They were doing badly because of their previous leader.

And who was benefiting or losing from that?The Liberal Democrats and the Greens.When Keir Starmer were in charge, they were doing well.People were not happy with Keir Starmer's administration, they were not happy with the government, so they were willing to vote for the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.And now that Andy Burnham has taken over, and Andy Burnham is popular, at least for now, Who's losing out there, of course, as Sir John Curtis has pointed out, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.But that could change depending on Andy Burnham.

And I've said this before, politics is extremely volatile.flux.If one person is doing well one day, somebody else is doing badly that same day, but things can change.So if Andy Burnham starts to slip up, if he's not able to get his policies through Parliament, if he starts to see rebellions, if the public turn against Andy Burnham, then Labour will be in a similar position as they were before and of course this is going to benefit the parties on the left or in the centre like the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.So I'll leave a link in the description to all of this, this interview with Sir John Curtis, I do recommend watching it and I'll see you in the next video.

If you've made it this far thank you so much for watching this video.

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