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Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has taken away the “Johnsonian coalition” that led the Tories to a landslide election victory, according to Britain’s top pollster. Professor Sir John Curtice said the insurgent party had won over the voters that backed Boris Johnson in the 2019 general election.

He told Times Radio: “Basically what Reform have done is to take away from the Conservatives the Johnsonian coalition that delivered them victory in 2019 that Nigel Farage would argue he loaned to Boris Johnson by standing down in Tory-held seats.

“Now as a result that section of our society which swung behind the Conservatives in 2019 have swung behind Reform and that is still a significant section which at the moment because it’s concentrating behind Reform as opposed to being fragmented between the Conservatives and Reform 12 months ago now presents a challenge frankly to all the other parties.”

Prof Curtice said Reform is polling at an average of around 30-31% at the moment, ahead of Labour on 23% and the Tories on 18%.

He said this would be enough to be the largest party in Westminster at the next election due to the first past the post electoral system.

Prof Curtice said: “We already know from the local elections that 30-31% for Reform and running way ahead of everyone else means that rather than being a disadvantage to them as it was last summer, the electoral system is likely to prove beneficial to them.

“Now whether that will be enough to get an overall majority or not, certainly they would be easily the biggest party at least and probably very difficult to think of any government being formed other than by Nigel Farage.

“It’s not that they are 30-31% which is not a particularly high figure by historical standards, it’s that they are seven, eight, points ahead of Labour and 13 points ahead of the Conservatives, therefore they are going to come first in a lot of constituencies.”

Prof Curtice added that Mr Farage’s “road to number 10 is to carry on doing what he’s doing”.

He went on: “Eventually he has to come up with more in the way of a governmental programme and hope that the incumbent government fails to improve the economy, fails to turn around the health service and therefore as a result we are looking at an electorate which is still deeply unhappy and might therefore try something else.

“His problem of course is not all of those things are in his hands to control.”

Prof Curtice also warned Sir Keir Starmer faces a major headache as he loses voters to Reform and parties on the left such as the Greens.

He said: “About 16% of the people who voted for Labour last time are now saying they’d vote for Reform or the Conservatives, most of those saying Reform.

“But equally there are 18% of people saying they would now vote Liberal Democrat or Green.

“You can see Labour’s problem. Labour’s problem is that the coalition of the 35% that they assembled 12 months ago is fracturing in two directions.

“So Labour want to get support for Reform down for obvious reason, but Labour can’t ignore the fact that they’re also losing votes just as heavily to what we might call the more progressive wing of our politics.

“To that extent while Reform pose the greater immediate threat to Labour in terms of seats, they need to realise that in order to get the votes that they might need to deal with that they’ve got to avoid losing votes on the more progressive end of politics which does leave them with a very difficult problem.”

It comes as Reform, which currently has five MPs, has been riding high in national opinion polls following its success in the local elections in England earlier this month.