On the latest polling to rock British politics
Matt Goodwin
Mar 14
It’s been a funny old week.
On social media, after the very public spat between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe, a handful of journalists and anonymous accounts are confidently declaring Reform is “no longer a serious party”, is “finished”, and “the party’s over”.
But out there, in reality —where voters are too busy with work and looking after their families to spend every hour of every waking day online—it’s a very different story.
In the very latest national polls—as I pointed out on X—Nigel Farage and Reform are now averaging 26% of the national vote.
That’s 12-points up on what Reform polled at the general election last year. It’s 5-points higher than what Kemi Badenoch and the hapless Tories are polling. And it’s just 6-points short of what Reform need to win a majority in their own right.
Indeed, of the last ten polls in British politics, Nigel Farage and Reform have finished ahead of the established parties in nearly half of them.
They’ve now hoovered up almost half of all Brexit voters in this country, more than one in five people who voted for Rishi Sunak and the Tories in 2024, and are the most popular party in British politics among men.
It is, put simply, deeply impressive for an insurgent party.
And then alongside that, this morning, comes news from pollster Lord Ashcroft that Reform is also on course to win the first by-election of this parliament, in Runcorn and Helsby, called after a Labour MP decided to knock-out one of his own voters.
Much like nationally, in Runcorn and Helsby Reform is attracting voters who are mainly worried about immigration and asylum, and who think Nigel Farage, not Keir Starmer or Kemi Badenoch, would ‘make the best prime minister’.
And while Reform is poaching around 40% of disillusioned Tory voters in this northern seat, it’s also making significant inroads among supporters of other parties —attracting 25-30% of Labour, Liberal Democrat, or Green voters.
Reform, in other words, has nearly doubled the level of support it mobilised at the general election last summer and is continuing to build a broad, diverse, and cross-class coalition of voters in both Labour and Tory seats.
So why the huge disconnect between what a few noisy people are saying online, after the spat between Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage, and what we’re witnessing offline?
Because, to be blunt, Twitter or X is not the real world —far from it.
It’s filled with people who spend almost all their time on social media, surrounded by people who think exactly the same way they do, and who spend far too little time out there in the real world, talking to actual voters and, dare I say it, normal people.
Social media, like a big part of legacy media, is also filled with political amateurs who have a terrible track record of understanding and predicting politics, who confidently tell us that because of the dispute between Lowe and Farage “it’s all over for Reform”.
But what they conveniently forget is that the UK Independence Party (UKIP) won the 2024 European elections despite internal challenges, Brexit won the 2016 referendum despite internal challenges, Donald Trump won the White House in 2016 despite internal challenges, the Brexit Party won the 2019 European elections despite internal challenges, and Donald Trump then won the White House all over again in 2024 despite internal challenges. Ron DeSantis —remember him?
Consistently, in other words, social media routinely attaches a level of significance to events, disputes, rows, and controversies that is wholly disproportionate to their actual level of significance. It’s an echo chamber —not a reliable barometer.
It’s also filled with an assortment of political fantasists who, bizarrely, have spent the last week proclaiming that a party like Reform which is (a) unequivocally committed to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights so we can deport foreign criminals and control our borders, (b) an immediate freeze on mass uncontrolled immigration, and (c) a freeze on all welfare benefits and health tourism for immigrants is, get this, “not radical enough”. Not radical enough!
Apparently, the one movement and leader in this country that forced through Brexit against the entire establishment —the biggest constitutional shake-up in this country since the Reformation— who transformed the national debate about immigration, and are now calling to leave the ECHR, which would also radically transform the constitutional and legal settlement in this country, are, and I quote, the “Tories 2.0”.
Are these people serious?
The answer is no —they are not serious.
They are not serious at all.
Because social media, as I said in my last piece, is not only filled with amateurs and fantasists; it’s also filled with political purists, not political realists.
It’s filled with keyboard warriors who instead of working to save this country via the only movement that is capable of mobilising the levels of support that are needed to pressure the establishment and win a majority are instead wasting their lives online engaging in ‘purity spirals’ —outbidding and rewarding one another for increasingly radical if not extreme views which win them applause from random accounts but look utterly insane to most hardworking, taxpaying, law-abiding, patriotic people.
“When you start looking for purity in politics”, wrote Mario Vargas Llosa, “you eventually end up in unreality”. And that is exactly where more than a few people on social media are today —they are living in unreality.
You can both think that Reform managed the dispute with Rupert Lowe badly but also that Reform is the only credible, genuine alternative to the established parties. But that’s not what many of these political purists think.
No, they are living in a fantasy land where they genuinely appear to believe that the path to power in this country runs through rejecting Nigel Farage and Reform and instead offering the British people a movement that is fully committed to the ‘remigration’ or ‘repatriation’ of all immigrants out of Britain and is led by figures who might be known on Twitter but nobody out there in the real world has ever heard of. Figures who have never won a nationwide election, who have made incredibly vague statements about possibly deporting “entire communities” of British nationals, who would —I assume based on their past statements— be open to some kind of alliance with Tommy Robinson, and who would also, instantly, attract all kinds of activists, members, and candidates whose social media feeds are filled with references to white genocide, ethno-nationalism, and endless talk about white replacement.
This is the kind of party that would inspire the average voter in bell-weather seats like Dartford, Watford, Loughborough, and Northampton? Are you being serious?
Sorry, but these people are either political nihilists and kamikaze pilots who have no serious interest in saving this country or they are, put simply, away with the fairies.
Such arguments are completely and utterly disconnected from a political culture in this country that’s largely built on a wholesale public rejection of anything and everything that comes close to smelling of political extremism.
Yes, a large majority of British people want an end to mass uncontrolled immigration. They want to deport illegal migrants who arrive on the small boats, as well as foreign criminals. And they could be persuaded to leave the ECHR if they were convinced this is what’s needed to control their borders and keep people safe.
But screaming about ‘remigration’ and ‘mass deportations’? Berating Nigel Farage (Nigel Farage!) because he’s “too soft” and “just a Tory”? Sorry, but these people need to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves some tough questions.
Because the fact of the matter is that such a party would be comprehensively and consistently torn to shreds by media, the establishment, and the state. It would deeply alienate Middle England who would take one look at all this and say ‘no thanks’.
It would drive 150 mph into an electoral cul-de-sac. And it would instantly make life a lot easier for the Uniparty, further toxifying and stigmatising debates about mass immigration and border security that are only now starting to enter the mainstream in a major way, with the British public becoming more sceptical and open to change.
Here’s what I think.
Instead of endlessly criticising the one anti-establishment party in this country that’s successfully mobilising more than one in four voters, is leading in the polls, will almost certainly smash apart Labour and the Tories at elections in Wales next year, and thereafter has s a credible chance of changing this country, perhaps these online purists should just go and start their own party.
Because my hunch —and I’ve been right about a lot of things over the years— is that no matter how much money they might attract from America they would probably end up polling somewhere around what the last party in this country to talk about remigration and repatriation, the British National Party, polled —just 3%.
I don’t know about you but the only thing I’m interested in right now, and I suspect the only thing millions of people out there are interested in right now, is working towards the kind of change that the hardworking, taxpaying, law-abiding people of this country both want and deserve to see.
The kind of change that would represent a fundamental departure from the failing policies of the Uniparty in this country. The kind of change that would represent a rejection of the broken status-quo that has governed this country for half a century.
The kind of change that would reassert the principles of national preference and popular sovereignty that are so glaringly absent from our politics and national conversation. And the kind of change that could only ever be delivered out there in the real world by political realists who have a track record of winning nationwide elections and referendums, not online purists who have never won anything before.