LONDON – Britain’s governing Labour Party has caught up with, or overtaken, Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK in the polls, according to three different surveys which showed a bounce for new leader Andy Burnham a week after he became prime minister.
Farage’s anti-immigrant Reform party had led nearly every opinion poll for more than a year and gained hundreds of seats in local and regional votes in May, prompting Labour to remove the unpopular Keir Starmer and install Burnham, a more charismatic former mayor, as prime minister on July 20.
He spent his first week as leader looking to give voters “breathing space” on the cost of living – removing a tax on energy bills, capping bus fares and cutting taxes for pubs and bars.
A poll by Survation found that Labour was on 26 per cent after Burnham’s first week in office, overtaking Reform on 24 per cent. The week before Starmer announced his resignation in June, Labour had been on just 19 per cent, with Reform on 27 per cent.
Survation chief executive Damian Lyons Lowe said the poll was “the highest Survation has had Labour since June 3, 2025, and the first Labour polling lead since May 3, 2025”.
Other pollsters reported a similar pattern. On July 27, More In Common showed Labour on 28 per cent ahead of Reform on 24 per cent, while YouGov had Reform and Labour tied at 22 per cent, with Labour up 6 points since May and Reform at their lowest level of support since March 2025.
YouGov also said more Britons saw Burnham as a better prime minister than Farage, or any other major party leader.
As Labour enjoys a bounce, Reform faces questions over whether gifts from wealthy backers were properly declared, which Farage has angrily decried as a bid by the establishment to discredit him.
Asked about the bounce in the polls on July 27, Burnham said he would not get “carried away” but was pleased to have “made a start where hopefully I’ve connected with people”. REUTERS
