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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.’

The Nowak murder has lit a match under British politics. This is how we got here

Polling from the fractious summer of 2024 for the research group More In Common suggested that only 18% of voters overall believed the police treat ethnic minorities more favourably than white people. But among Reform voters, that number jumped to 47. This is a message that appeals to Farage’s base, and he’s not afraid to use it.

TikTok raps and deepfakes: inside Makerfield’s digital battleground

Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, said the murder “had shaken and outraged the participants we spoke to in Makerfield, many of whom couldn’t help thinking about their own kids”.

“From more right-leaning participants there was sympathy with the idea the police response was a result of two-tier policing, Farage’s arguments here resonated, and some compared it to the handling of the grooming gangs,” he said.

“But what most of this group — even those sympathetic to Farage — really didn’t like was the sense the Reform leader had directly disrespected the wishes of Henry’s family not to fuel further hatred or tension. For them that was ‘out of order’.”

Polanski’s breast enlargement claim puts public off Greens

Zack Polanski’s claim that he could enlarge women’s breasts through hypnotherapy has put people off voting for the Green Party, polling has shown. A poll by More in Common found that a third (33 per cent) of voters would consider voting for the Greens. That figure fell to 16 per cent once voters were told about remarks made by Mr Polanski, who leads the insurgent hard-Left party.

Trump’s Iran war is a bigger headache for the British right than left

Davey believes that, by being hawkish over Iran, the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has made a similar mistake to her predecessor Sir Iain Duncan Smith in 2003, when the former Tory leader criticised Tony Blair for “treading water” over America’s war in Iraq. The Lib Dems hope this can help them persuade some wavering Tories. “Making gains with soft Conservatives is the biggest opportunity for us, and the war is incredibly unpopular with those voters,” says a Lib Dem source. The numbers back this up. According to pollsters More in Common, some 55 per cent of Britons now think the prime minister should “stand up” to Trump, with 27 per cent thinking he shouldn’t. Support for the war is also dropping fast among voters of every party.

Keir Starmer will pay the price if the bill for Iran war spirals

What voters care about is the outcome. If energy prices go up, they will be angry with the government. Voters might expect, for instance, that he use public money to keep their energy bills low. But public debt as a share of GDP is already set to rise to more than 95 per cent by the end of the parliament. As Helen Miller, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has put it, we may have become accustomed to governments protecting household incomes from external shocks but “that can’t go on for ever”. The political potency of this is clear. After the recent by-election in Gorton & Denton, the public opinion research company More in Common conducted focus groups to help it understand why people had voted as they did. Overwhelmingly, voters who deserted Labour, and even those who did not, talked of the cost of living.

Britain’s class politics is back—with a Green twist

Historically, Britain’s working class tended to vote Labour, while middle- and upper-class voters supported the Tories. This dynamic broke down in the 2010s, particularly after the Brexit referendum in 2016 as cultural issues rose in salience. Age and education replaced class as the key demographic dividers. Since then the class dynamics of British politics have been scrambled. To get to the bottom of this The Economist analysed a survey of 8,921 Britons, conducted by pollsters at More in Common in December 2025. The data suggest that Britain’s politics are now divided along two dimensions. The young, the higher-educated, women and ethnic minorities are more likely to vote for parties on the left—Labour, Greens, Liberal Democrats or Scottish or Welsh nationalists. Voters on the right are older, less-educated, whiter and more male.

Andy Burnham criticises ‘bankruptcy’ of Labour approach to campaigning

Burnham was speaking a week on from Labour’s loss of its once safe seat in the Manchester constituency, after Starmer and his allies blocked him from standing to be the party’s candidate. Labour’s deputy leader and Burnham ally, Lucy Powell, has said he would have won the contest, in which the Green party’s candidate, Hannah Spencer, was victorious. Labour came third, with Reform UK in second. Burnham described polling by More in Common that found a majority of people did not think the cost of living crisis would ever end as “code red for Westminster politics”. “This is getting extremely dangerous, and change in our political system and culture is desperately needed,” he added.

Shabana Mahmood to sacrifice ‘bourgeois support’ over migrants

However, sources close to Mahmood have hit back at suggestions that Labour is losing votes to the Greens on immigration and pointed to polling that found Green voters supported her reforms. Polling carried out by the More in Common think tank found that Green voters were among the biggest cohort that supported Mahmood’s asylum reform to replace permanent refugee protection with temporary status.