Why 30pc could take Farage to power

The mad world of four-party Westminster politics

Until now, no one has won power without having to win over a huge chunk of the country: between 34 and 50 per cent. But four-party politics changes the game completely. The below shows the latest projection from Electoral Calculus, a votes-to-seats calculator. It shows that in today’s polls, 30pc - Farage wins 55 per cent of seats. It’s a stretch, but Reform’s entry into the last Westminster general election also had this effect, giving Keir Starmer a far bigger majority than his historically low vote share would suggest.

The above encapsulates what a lot of people are still missing. Nigel Farage does not need to win over “the country” to win: he just needs 30pc of it. Which you can (at a push) get with polarising Trump-style tactics. This will be a strategic dilemma for Farage now: does he soften, drop the race-baiting tactic, try to widen his appeal? Or just go for polarising methods (which work as your opponents rise to the bait every time) and try to solidify his 30pc?

The introduction of the very possibility of 30pc Prime Ministers is new. I went to Glasgow for the film to meet John Curtice, Britain’s leading psephologist.

“British politics is arguably more fragmented than it ever has been before,” he told me. “With our electoral system, it's not how many votes you've got, it is how many you have got compared with what everybody else has got… If our politics continues to be so fragmented, Reform can continue to exploit what is a niche market of socially-conservative, pro-Brexit voters and corral them around that. Essentially, it's the Johnsonian coalition. The truth is, unless either Labour recover or the Conservatives recover, then that 31 per cent could conceivably be enough.”