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Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has overtaken the Conservatives in a national opinion poll for the first time, in the latest setback for Rishi Sunak and his faltering Tory election campaign.
Reform has climbed two percentage points to 19 per cent, overtaking the Tories who remained on 18 per cent, according to a YouGov poll, which put Labour on 37 per cent.
The survey showing the “crossover” moment of Reform surpassing the Conservatives was conducted after the prime minister launched the Tory election manifesto on Tuesday.
While it is only one poll and the Financial Times’ tracker shows on average that the Tories have an eight-point lead over Reform, it is a fresh blow for Sunak, who is attending a G7 summit in Italy.
Farage, leader of Reform, said in an ITV election event on Thursday evening: “Just before we came on air, we overtook the Conservatives in national opinion polls. We are now the opposition to Labour.”
As attention turns to the future of the Conservatives after the election, Farage said earlier on Thursday he would be willing to lead a merged Reform-Conservative grouping.
He predicted “something new is going to emerge on the centre-right”, telling LBC that the Tories “may well be dead” after the election but that he would “be prepared to lead the centre-right in this country”.
A reverse takeover would be welcomed by some rightwing Conservatives, who venerate the arch-Brexiter and believe their party’s travails stem from its failure to advocate a more hardline approach on immigration, tax and cultural issues.
Suella Braverman, who served as home secretary under Sunak, said this week that the Conservatives should embrace Farage, arguing there was “not much difference” between his policies and those of the Tories, as she rallied colleagues to “unite the right”.
Sunak had hoped to get back on the front foot as he broke away from his foundering election campaign in the UK for a two-day G7 summit on the Puglian riviera.
Asked by a reporter about seeming “down in the dumps” after a deflated performance at a Sky News election event in Grimsby on Wednesday, where he had faced tough questions about broken promises, Sunak said: “Definitely not.”
With the polls indicating Labour is on track for a parliamentary majority just three weeks before polling day, Sunak dismissed any suggestion of being snubbed by allies at the G7 summit who may believe he is on his way out of office.
“I’ve already sat down with Emmanuel, spoken to Olaf about a bunch of things,” he said of brush-by encounters with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
However, Sunak was prepared to acknowledge a setback in relation to the conduct of his parliamentary aide Craig Williams, who is under investigation by the Gambling Commission after placing a £100 bet on the date of the election three days before the prime minister announced it would be July 4.
Sunak said it was “very disappointing” and highlighted Williams’ own admission that it had been a “huge error of judgment”.
Tory insiders said the episode was seen as a betrayal by Williams and had dealt a psychological blow to other members of Sunak’s inner circle.
The prime minister was more upbeat discussing the $50bn loan to Ukraine that the G7 agreed, which he said “the UK have been leading on” for months.
He also welcomed the publication of Labour’s manifesto, which he said contained “no big ideas”.
Declaring that he would still be “fighting very hard” until polling day, Sunak said he wanted to ensure voters knew they would be “saddled” with higher taxes by a Labour government.
Foreign secretary Lord David Cameron was forced to insist he not did feel pity for Sunak. “I don’t feel sorry for him because he’s a very effective prime minister who wants to go on doing his job,” he said.
While Cameron told the BBC that the polls did not “look good” for the Conservatives, he argued “they didn’t look very good in 2015 when I won the election”.
Tory insiders said morale in the campaign had continued to nosedive. One Conservative figure said it felt as though many campaigners had “entirely given up”, adding it had not gone unnoticed how low a profile many cabinet ministers were keeping.
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