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Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives are projected to finish second with 130 seats, representing a modest improvement on their catastrophic 2024 general election performance.

Reform would land in third on 123 seats, a far cry from the 311 constituencies YouGov’s equivalent poll forecast the party winning just twelve months ago.

The research, drawing on roughly 14,000 respondents surveyed between August 23 and September 18, offers a snapshot rather than a prediction of the eventual election outcome.

Reform’s collapse in projected seats has been partly attributed to the emergence of Restore Britain, a rival right-wing outfit headed by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, which has fragmented the conservative vote in key marginals.

YouGov’s Patrick English noted that Britain’s splintered political landscape is hurting the right disproportionately, with competing parties cannibalising each other’s support and enabling Labour to cling on in constituencies it might otherwise surrender.

The poll delivers particularly uncomfortable news for Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, both of whom defected from the Tories to join Farage’s party earlier this year.

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GB NEWS

The seat-by-seat modelling suggests both Mr Jenrick’s Nottinghamshire constituency of Newark and Mrs Braverman’s Fareham & Waterlooville seat would flip back to the Conservatives.

Just a year ago, YouGov’s MRP had Reform on 311 seats, tantalisingly close to a governing majority.

That projection has now been slashed by more than 60 per cent in a definitive blow to Mr Farage’s ambition to become the next Prime Minister.

The parliamentary arithmetic presents a headache for all sides. Labour’s projected 241 seats would represent a loss of 162 from the 403 it currently holds, meaning Mr Burnham could not govern without assembling a multi-party alliance.

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REUTERS

To reach a working majority, the Prime Minister would need backing from Sir Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats on 71 seats, the SNP on 40, Zack Polanski’s Greens on nine, and potentially Plaid Cymru on 15.

The right faces an equally intractable problem. Even if the Conservatives and Reform were to stitch together a post-election pact, their combined 253 seats would leave them 73 short of the 326-seat threshold for a Commons majority.

Mrs Badenoch moved swiftly to pour cold water on any suggestion of uniting the right.

Speaking to GB News on Thursday, the Conservative leader said: “It’s about uniting the country, not just uniting the right and uniting the country behind common sense is what Conservatives want to do.”

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The Tory leader took aim at the character of those who had crossed the floor, declaring: “Many of the problematic people have gone to Reform, how can we then join with them?”

She also highlighted that Farage is currently subject to a parliamentary investigation over whether he failed to declare a £5million gift from crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne before taking his Commons seat.

Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice struck a more defensive tone, telling Times Radio: “Who knows when the election will be, whether it’s the early part of next year, whenever, or whether it goes long through until 2029. We’ll be ready.”

He dismissed any prospect of collaboration with Mrs Badenoch’s party, branding the Conservatives “soggy Lib Dems sort of pretending to be Conservative.”

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A separate Survation poll conducted with 38 Degrees, shared with The Guardian, suggests Reform’s position could deteriorate even further.

The research, based on more than 8,000 voters, found that widespread tactical voting among progressive supporters could push Farage’s party down to fourth place, with Labour climbing to 319 seats, just six short of a majority.

Around 18 per cent of voters in key marginals said they were open to switching to whichever candidate was best placed locally to defeat Reform.