Labour Crumbles to Third as Reform UK Surges Past 34%
Reform UK MPs walked out of Parliament after Starmer attacked Farage, as new polls show Labour collapsing to third place while economic anxiety grips British voters.
Reform UK MPs stormed out of Parliament on March 25 after Prime Minister Keir Starmer called their leader Nigel Farage an "absolute disgrace." The dramatic walkout captured Britain's political realignment, as Reform surges to record poll numbers while Labour collapses to third place.
This marks the most significant shift in British politics since Labour's founding century ago. Starmer faces an existential crisis less than two years after winning the July 2024 general election with 34 percent of the vote. New polling shows Reform UK at 34 to 35 percent support, its highest ever, while Labour trails at 19 to 21 percent.
The Opinium survey conducted March 18 to 20 places Reform at 27 percent, Labour at 21 percent and Conservatives at 17 percent. Labour suffers double trouble from the rise of Reform on the right and the growth of the Greens on the left.
Our figures suggest a near-catastrophic wipe-out for Labour which would be the party's worst result since February 1910 under Arthur Henderson, said Martin Baxter, founder of Electoral Calculus. The Gorton and Denton by-election result on February 26 provided human proof of the trend.
The Green Party's Hannah Spencer won 40.7 percent of votes in a seat Labour held for nearly a century, with Reform placing second and Labour a distant third. Conservatives lost their deposit with just 706 votes.
"I will keep on fighting... against the extremes in politics on the right and the left, parties who want to tear our country apart," Starmer told reporters after the defeat. But voter defection data proves the movement goes beyond anti-Labour sentiment.
According to Ipsos, 27 percent of 2024 Conservative voters now say they would back Reform. BMG Research found 15 percent of 2024 Labour voters have switched to Reform. Starmer's personal approval ratings have cratered alongside his party's fortunes.
YouGov's March 20 to 23 survey shows Starmer with a net favourability rating of minus 48, with 70 percent viewing him unfavourably versus 22 percent favourable. The prime minister's January rating of minus 57 represented the joint-lowest ever recorded for any prime minister except Liz Truss.
New Arab noted that Starmer's 75 percent unfavourability in January exceeded Hamas's 63 percent unfavourability among British voters. On the same day as the walkout, Starmer announced a crypto donation ban and Communities Secretary Steve Reed confirmed a £100,000 cap on overseas donations based on the Rycroft Review.
The move directly targets Reform UK's financial lifeline, which relies heavily on crypto investor Christopher Harborne's £12 million in donations over the past year. Harborne's contributions represent two-thirds of Reform's total funding, making the party uniquely vulnerable to the new restrictions.
"We will act decisively to protect our democracy," Starmer declared while unveiling the measures. Labour backbenchers now openly question whether Starmer can survive until the next general election.
"There will be a revolt in the PLP and I am afraid that it's a few weeks away," warned Labour MP Karl Turner in March. "If we do badly in Scotland, Wales and up and down regions of England the PM will undoubtedly face a challenge."
Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner emerges as a potential challenger, having called the Gorton defeat a "wake up call" and urged the government to be "braver." Her stance against Starmer's immigration reforms as "un-British" positions her as an alternative to the current leadership.
The local elections on May 7 will test whether Labour's collapse becomes a permanent realignment. According to projections, Labour could lose 1,740 wards while Reform gains 1,508 and Greens add 586.
Eighty percent of Britons believe Britain is getting worse as a place to live, according to Ipsos data from November 2025. Thirty-three percent struggle to manage on present income. Opinium data from March 2026 shows 90 percent report rising grocery costs and 79 percent face higher energy bills.
"The latest Ipsos results demonstrate the severe difficulties facing Labour ahead of the Budget, as they find themselves unable to turn around a deep public sense of national decline," said Gideon Skinner, senior director of UK politics at Ipsos.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch seized on Labour's troubles after the Gorton defeat. "Shows Keir Starmer's premiership is finished," she declared. "The PM would resign if he had any integrity."
Seat projections paint a devastating picture for Labour's future. Electoral Calculus's December MRP projected Reform winning 335 seats, Labour reduced to 41 and Conservatives holding 92. More in Common's January MRP showed Reform with 381 seats, Labour with 85 and Conservatives with 70.
Professor Rob Ford of the University of Manchester distilled voters' message to Labour: "They sent it in last year's local elections. They sent it in Gorton and Denton. And they're going to be sending it in the devolved elections coming up as well. 'We really don't like you. We're not going to vote for you.'"
The political landscape Starmer inherited has fractured beyond recognition, with Reform's insurgent populism exploiting public anger over economic stagnation and elite detachment. Britain's first-past-the-post system, designed to deliver stable majorities, now faces its greatest test from a movement that has rendered the traditional left irrelevant.