𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

A certain group of voters will prove crucial at the next general election if Nigel Farage is to emerge victorious, it has been suggested. Reform UK is riding high in the polls, with the party projected to win 381 seats – 376 more than its 2024 total – in More in Common’s latest prediction. Labour, meanwhile, is languishing on 85 in the research and would lose 326 constituencies if the result were to manifest.

This is still more than the Conservatives, who would win only 70 seats – 51 fewer than last time. Now, in a preview of the new political year, which marks the 10-year anniversary of the EU referendum, Ben Walker, data journalist at the New Statesman, has suggested that previously unseen voters could prove crucial during future elections.

He said: “Some towns, particularly Leave-heavy cities like Stoke-on-Trent, saw such a high turnout that they’ve never seen anything like it since, and that in general elections, coming out for Boris Johnson, coming out for Theresa May, turnout never returned to that.

“And I have to say now, with the rise of Reform, I wonder, those votes that came out for leave, and have since never come out again, maybe they might be coming out for Reform, and we might be surprised at the level of turnout seen in some of these Leave-backing cities.”

Vote Leave won out in 2016 in the North West, the East, West Midlands, East Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, North East, Wales and South West.

The West Midlands had the highest Leave margin (59.3%), with the East Midlands coming in a close second (58.8%).

It comes as the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, hit out at “the falsehoods peddled by Nigel Farage and others” during the Brexit referendum and insisted his Government was “quietly, seriously getting on with diplomacy” instead of “the politics of melodrama” in an interview with the BBC.

He said: “One of the reasons we’ve been able to reset with the EU is because both we and the EU have decided we’re not just looking back and picking over the bones of Brexit.

“We’re now looking forward on this. But what I would say is this, that what is becoming increasingly apparent is the falsehoods that were peddled by Nigel Farage and others at the time of the Brexit referendum, that promise that all you had to do was leave the EU and immigration would go down.

“Then we had the Boris wave, where it quadrupled. All you had to do was leave the EU and you’d have £350 million a week for your NHS – well, it hasn’t materialised.”

Sir Keir added: “All you’d have to do is leave the EU, and all your red tape would be gone. Tell that to any business that’s trying to trade with the EU.

“So our manifesto promise was not to reopen this, not to seek to rejoin the EU, but have a closer relationship.

“That is in our national interest, and that is what we’re pursuing, and because of the way that we’re conducting this, which is not shouting and screaming and the politics of melodrama, but just quietly, seriously getting on with the diplomacy.

“We have got a much better relationship with the EU, much better trading relations, much better understanding when it comes to defence and security.”