A new Sunday Times poll shows Labour on track to lose nearly 200 seats, with Reform U.K. making major gains and seven cabinet ministers – Angela Rayner among them – facing defeat, setting the stage for a hung parliament and the potential end of Britain’s two-party system. Here’s an excerpt:
The first significant seat-by-seat analysis since the General Election forecasts that, if another poll were held today, Labour would lose its majority and nearly 200 of the seats it won in July. The party, which won 411 seats in what critics called a “loveless landslide”, would lose 87 seats to the Conservatives, 67 to Reform U.K. and 26 to the Scottish National Party. Labour’s “red wall” gains would be almost entirely reversed, with Reform, rather than the Conservatives, as the main beneficiaries.
While Labour would still emerge on top, it would win barely a third of the total number of seats, giving the party a lead of just six seats over the Conservatives, while Reform would emerge as the third-largest party.
The analysis, by the think tank More in Common, suggests Labour would win 228 seats, the Conservatives 222 and Reform 72. The Liberal Democrats would win 58 seats, with the SNP on 37 and the Green Party on two.
The implied national vote share has Labour on 25%, the Conservatives on 26%, Reform on 21%, the Lib Dems on 14%, the Greens on 8%, the SNP on 2% and other parties on 3%.
Seven cabinet ministers would lose their seats, six of them to Reform, with Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, losing Ilford North to an independent candidate, according to the analysis.
Others losing to Reform would include the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner; the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper; the Defence Secretary, John Healey; the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband; the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson; and the Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds.
Two further cabinet members would face tight races they are estimated to win by less than five percentage points against Reform: Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in Wolverhampton South East, and Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, in Wigan.
The model, created with survey data of more than 11,000 people, highlights a significant acceleration of electoral fragmentation since July’s General Election, with the model suggesting an election today would produce an unstable parliament with no single party able to form a government. To hold a majority in the House of Commons, a political party needs to win more than half the seats — at least 326 out of the possible 650.
According to the analysis, the next general election could herald the end of Britain’s traditional system of two-party politics, with 271 seats won with less than a third of the vote.
In another 221 seats the winner would hold a lead of less than five percentage points, where even a small swing could change the results, according to the analysis. In 87 seats the result is too close to predict and there is a statistical tie, with the estimated winner less than two percentage points ahead of their closest rival.
This appears to suggest that the U.K. is beginning to resemble other European countries, such as Ireland, France and Germany, where parties are struggling to achieve an outright majority. …
In July, Starmer’s party won 411 seats out of 650 on just under 34% of the popular vote on an extremely low turnout of 60%. Labour in fact won fewer votes in 2024 (9.7 million) than it did under Jeremy Corbyn when it lost in 2017 (12.9 million) or fell to a cataclysmic defeat in 2019 (10.3 million).
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