Buried in an article about Trump leaving the U.K. out of his tariff threat to the EU, and whether this means Brexit is finally paying off, is a statistic that I have not seen before. It relates to the trouble the Conservative or Tory Party is in with Brit voters.
A poll from YouGov on Tuesday put Farage’s Reform UK ahead of Labour, in first place nationally for the first time. Polling this far out from the next election is easy to write off as meaningless. But while today’s numbers can’t predict what will happen in 2029, it would be a mistake to dismiss the risks for Labour.
What those of us sympathetic to the U.K. will want to watch going forward is whether the Tories will co-opt the populist nationalism reflected in Brexit or whether Farage’s Reform UK will absorb the Tories, paralleling the way MAGA absorbed the old GOP. I’m asking the question will Farage be a Ross Perot or a Trump?
