Andy Burnham would be unwise to call an early general election because Reform UK could still become the largest party in parliament, the UK’s leading polling expert has said.
Nigel Farage’s party has slumped in the polls in recent months and is battling a series of scandals as well as a police investigation over donations.
However, on Friday, it revealed it had secured a record staggering £36m donation from British cryptocurrency entrepreneur Ben Delo in a major boost for its election campaign.
And it could still beat Labour, whose popularity has surged ahead since Mr Burnham became prime minister, to take more seats in the House of Commons, Sir John Curtice said.
A YouGov poll carried out earlier this week shows a tight race between the three largest parties, with Reform UK and Labour both on 23 per cent of the vote and the Conservatives close behind on 20 per cent.
However, Reform – which had a nine point lead over Labour a year ago – has slumped considerably in recent months, and last month was overtaken by Labour for the first time since March 2025.
“The numbers are not there” for Mr Burnham to opt for an early election in the hopes of securing another term as prime minister and catching out Reform before they can recover from a summer of woes, Sir John warned in an interview with The Independent.
“At the moment, the polls are saying that the Labour Party would lose its majority and that indeed one of the two post-Burnham bounce mega-poll MRPs (Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification) actually has Reform with more seats than Labour,” he said.
“One of the things you have to remember is this – and this is something that people have not picked up – the decline in Labour support since 2024, according to more than one mega-poll I’ve looked at, has occurred disproportionately in seats that Labour won in 2024.
“If you look at the pattern of the decline in Labour support in the local elections, it was heaviest in places where they were previously strongest.
“That, of course, is what happened to the Conservative Party in 2024 and why they ended up with only (about) 120 seats” (down from 365 in 2019).
“It’s that pattern that makes it possible for Reform, even if they’re not terribly far ahead of Labour, to still do perfectly well in terms of seats.”
They could be the largest party, he added, because their vote is “geographically evenly spread”, which was a “big disadvantage in 2024 when they were coming third, but is not necessarily a disadvantage if they are coming first, even if only narrowly first”.
“So the numbers are not there and you’re going to sacrifice an awful lot of your MPs.” He also warned that Labour MPs had embraced Mr Burnham as their new leader this summer “in the belief that he would succeed in enabling them to continue their parliamentary careers”.
He added that, even becoming PM this late in the parliament, Mr Burnham has still “got three years”.
“He’s been dying to do it for years. Holding an election now means risking three years to gain two. It’s a bad deal.”
A Reform spokesperson said: “Sir John Curtice is right about one thing. Labour is terrified.
“We’d be delighted if Andy Burnham called an election. But he won’t because he knows Reform would win.”
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