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Lib Dems propose big tech levy to fund £250m online crime agency

Polling conducted to coincide with the conference in Brighton, released on Sunday, showed Lib Dem policies are less well known than those of Restore Britain, which launched as a political party only in February and has one MP – Rupert Lowe – compared with the Lib Dems’ 71.

The research by More in Common, which was presented at the conference, showed widespread uncertainty among voters about what the Lib Dems stood for. Just 39% said they had an idea, lower than for every other major party, including Restore Britain, which was formed by Lowe after he split from Reform UK.

Other parts of the research showed just 16% of voters said they had heard from the Lib Dems in recent months, against 66% for Reform, while 3% said they had seen Davey on social media, compared with 20% for the Reform leader, Nigel Farage.

Nigel Farage refuses to say if Reform UK’s £72mn gifts would comply with new cap

Distrust of Farage has risen sharply since the start of the year, according to polling by More in Common. It is now the top reason that respondents cite for not voting Reform.

Luke Tryl, executive director of More in Common, said that “the risk is less that people think Farage is uniquely corrupt — the risk is they think he is just more of the same, and all of the noise around their donations just confirms that.

What Reform supporters really think about wildlife and nature

According to More In Common’s analysis, “development which harms nature is politically toxic”.

Director Luke Tryl said: “Britons’ love of nature and wildlife is well established – and this research shows this extends across the whole political spectrum, including Britons who are more sceptical of other environmental policies, such as net zero.”

Warning that in Westminster “nature is not seen as an issue which determines votes or elections”, he said that candidates who are “seen to not care about protecting nature, from Reform to the Greens, risk losing votes”.

Majority of voters worried about impact of climate crisis on hospital patient safety

After a summer that saw a record five heatwaves and wildfires spread across the country, More in Common data showed high levels of concern, with 75% worried about the impact that high temperatures will have on the NHS’s ability to treat patients, and 63% concerned about schools’ ability to teach pupils.

Seven in ten of those polled said the UK should roll out solar-powered air conditioning in schools and hospitals, with 37% saying the government and taxpayers should foot the bill, with 22% saying it should be paid for by multinational oil and gas corporations.

Zia Yusuf: British politics feeds you to the wolves

The question is whether Reform can benefit from that decay. Its annual conference – which concludes on Sunday – comes after a difficult summer. Some of the momentum that propelled it to the top of the polls has fizzled; internal arguments have spilt into public view; Tim Montgomerie, an influential figure on the Right, has been suspended; Farage has endured weeks of scrutiny over his financial affairs. After reaching the low 30s in some polls last year, Reform has fallen back, with one More in Common poll this week putting it on 22 per cent, behind both Labour and the Conservatives.

Yusuf doesn’t pretend otherwise. “We’ve obviously declined in the polls,” he says – though one senior Reform figure insists internal figures still put them five or six points clear of the Tories. “But nothing has changed in terms of the facts on the ground. I came into politics just over two years ago, from the world of business, because I want to make Nigel Farage prime minister. My conviction has only intensified since then.”

POLL POSITION Labour leapfrogs Reform in poll for first time in 15 months amid ‘Burnham bounce’

More in Common’s Luke Tryl, who carried out the poll, said: “It’s only been a week since he entered office, but it’s clear that momentum is on the Prime Minister’s side.

“After a jam-packed week of high-profile policy announcements and media appearances, the Labour Party has surged in our weekly poll.

“With all the caveats that it’s just one poll, Labour now leads for the first time since March of last year, and holds their highest vote share since the early months of this government in 2024.”

Generational divide over how to pay for social care reform

Separate polling by More in Common, found that 70 per cent of the public wanted social care costs to be funded by some kind of taxation, compared with 21 per cent who said they should be paid for by individuals.

Luke Tryl, the company’s UK director, said this suggested that the public were open to change.

“Britain’s social care crisis has bedevilled successive governments, while attempts at reform have become associated with electoral peril,” he said.

Bev Craig is ready to shrug off Andy Burnham’s shadow

Labour is quietly confident they will retain Greater Manchester. The polls suggest a comfortable victory. A survey by More in Common from Monday (27 July) predicted Labour would beat Reform by a 30-point margin of 65 per cent to 35 per cent. “All the polls look great, but no complacency here,” a source from the party’s campaign told me. “We’re out on the doors in every borough across Greater Manchester, talking to voters.”

Reform UK has a new set of problems

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It is important not to suggest that we are seeing Reform’s decline: they have turned solid polling leads into strong local election results. Meanwhile, the Conservatives still face an existential threat — they weren’t even in contention in Makerfield. And Restore Britain has only just broken out beyond social media and the coast of East Anglia. But after Thursday, it does feel like the battle for the right might be more open than we assumed.

The UK’s new fault line is insiders v outsiders

On the same night that Andy Burnham led Labour to a historic victory in Makerfield, the Conservatives swept to victory in Aberdeen South with about 50 per cent of the vote. For anyone who had written the obituary of two-party politics, it looked as though the eulogies may have been premature.

But these twin victories for Labour and the Tories obscure more than they reveal. Not least because of who came second in those seats: it was Labour facing off against Reform UK and the Tories against the SNP. In contrast. Labour barely held their deposit in Aberdeen South and the Tories lost theirs in Makerfield.

What those contests actually showed is that the central fault line in British politics is no longer simply left versus right. Within those ideological blocs it’s insiders versus outsiders — those who want to “preserve and improve” the system, and those who want to burn it all down.

Andy Burnham allies consider coalition talks with Lib Dems for 2029 election

A More in Common poll in May showed that Labour would increase its vote share to 30 per cent with Burnham as leader, and Reform UK would fall to 27 per cent. Such a result would be unlikely to translate into a majority at a general election. One minister complained that it would be “a pretty underwhelming bounce”.

Can Reform see off the threat from Restore?

Polling for More in Common suggests that most Britons have heard of Restore Britain but do not know much about the party. Three in five say they are aware of it but 73 per cent admit to not even knowing that Lowe is the leader. The risk for Reform is that those most aware of Restore are Farage’s 2024 voters. In the pollster Luke Tryl’s words: ‘With higher awareness, Restore could take ground from those who are unhappy with Reform’s red line on figures like Tommy Robinson who promote prejudice, and want a more explicitly ethno-nationalist politics.’