Reform on the rise with young Brits? ‘It’s the one party that hasn’t let them down’
A new YouGov poll shows Reform UK is the second most-popular political party in the UK with young people, but does this suggest our youth is becoming more right-wing?
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In brief…
- A New YouGov poll puts Reform just 1% behind Labour across all demographics, and is the second most popular party with 18-24-year-olds.
- Author and professor Rob Ford tells The News Agents the real story of the new poll is about the failure of the Tories.
- The News Agents believe rising popularity for Reform, and other far-right parties, may be because it is the only political movement that hasn’t let them down.
What’s the story?
Reform UK has been calling itself “the party of the future” recently, and if you look at the latest polling, it’s easy to see some truth in that.
A new YouGov poll suggests that Labour is just one percent ahead of Reform when it comes to voting intention in the UK, with 25% of Britons saying that Nigel Farage and co would win their vote at the next General Election.
Celebrating these results, Farage has described the Labour government as "disastrous" and said the Conservatives are now "completely broken".
The YouGov poll showed Reform was the most popular party for men, and 50-64 year olds of all genders, with the Tories only being the preferred voting choice for the over-65s. Reform was the second most popular party in the UK with 18-24-year-olds, behind Labour.
So that's a slam dunk for Reform, right? Well maybe not, according to Rob Ford, author and Professor of Political Science at The University of Manchester.
Why Reform's polling success may not be what it seems
Ford tells The News Agents that the real story of this poll is "more of a reflection of Tory weakness than Reform strength."
Despite celebration that Reform is now the second-choice for 18-24-year-olds in the UK, only 19% of people polled responded this way, with preferences for Labour, Liberal Democrats and The Green Party making up 70% of young voter intention.
So we're a long way from seeing a rise of the far-right among British youth.
“I think two things can be true at once," Ford tells Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall.
"The radical right is doing better amongst young voters than it used to, but nonetheless, they are not the main choice of younger voters.
"Younger voters still remain, in relative terms, more inclined towards the progressive side of the political spectrum than older voters."
He says where the far-right are succeeding is in getting its young subset of voters mobilised, and more active in spreading its message.
Ford says that Reform has managed to appeal to "young, non-partisan, low political-engagement" voters, and says there is always an appeal to insurgent parties in this target (on the left or right).
But this, he adds, comes at a risk.
“Mobilising non-voters is one of the hardest asks in politics. It's a particularly hard ask in our first-past-the-post electoral system.”
He says predecessors of Reform, such as UKIP or The Brexit Party, always underperformed in votes compared to their polling when it came to local elections.
“If more people are saying to pollsters they like what they're hearing from Reform there's still a second really heavy lift they have to do – which is getting those voters to the polls when it counts,” he adds.
“As yet, we don't know whether they can do it. That doesn't mean they can't, but it means they've still got to prove that they can do that hardest task in our system."
He adds that far-right views are not necessarily getting more popular, but it's just that people who hold those views are now mobilised behind one party which is successfully reaching potential voters through news mediums such as social media.
What's The News Agents' take?
Emily and Lewis say it is understandable, in some ways, if more young people cast votes for the far-right. It has already happened across Europe, with high youth votes for extremist parties in France, Germany and Italy over the past year.
And this is quite simply because the far-right is one political movement that hasn't failed them.
"Young voters have lived through parties of the right and parties of the left," says Emily.
"They have not experienced the government of parties of Reform, of the far-right, of the anti establishment – whatever you want to call it.
"So are people just starting to vote for the thing that has not yet let them down?"
Lewis says it's the one political movement that hasn't been "de-legitimised" in their eyes.
“They haven't had their go, and people find that appealing. I think that is absolutely part of it," he adds.
"This is the political era that they grew up in. They didn't grow up in the era of 1990s liberalism, and this all seems a bit sort of scary and weird to them.
"They have grown up in an era where that hard right politics, and some of the figures that we've seen, including Trump, has been very normalised."