What does Nigel Farage’s win in Clacton actually prove?

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1:12Harriet Harman: Is there a reform slump or is it just that the other two parties are catching up a bit? That bin face number will worry him because nearly 10 ,000 people went out and voted for this comedy joke candidate.

1:31Ruth Davidson: They're starting to fall out with each other and that makes them even less effective.

1:41Harriet Harman: Hello and welcome to Electoral Dysfunction with me, Ruth Davidson. And me, Harriet Harman. And we're joined today by one of ED's best pals, the more uncommon polling expert, Luke Trill. Great to be with you. Just back from holidays in the States. I am, I am. And it was straight from the seaside in Provincetown to the seaside in Clapton this week. Well, that's exactly why we're recording this on a Friday morning instead of a Thursday afternoon, because the results of the Clapton by-election were in just a couple of hours ago, returning Nigel Farage to his seat with nearly 63 % of the vote. But it was quite an odd night for those at the count because the reform leader didn't show up to his own winning declaration.

2:22Ruth Davidson: So we'll be talking about all things Clapton, but we'll also be talking about the wider issues of reforms polling in the country at large.

2:31Harriet Harman: Plus, what happens now that Nigel Farage is an MP again because that means that the Standard Commissioner's investigation into his finances can restart. and we've had confirmation this morning that it already has. So let's take a quick timeline of the night before. Nigel Farage told supporters he had a rally before the count came on saying that he wasn't going to go to the declaration, saying he'd been told by police about a campaign to disrupt the result and he did not want to be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies. Then a reform spokesman came out and said on the record that Essex police advised Nigel not to attend the count tonight due to a credible threat against him.

3:08Harriet Harman: Then Essex police said that warning didn't come from them and that they didn't advise any candidates to stay away. They said on the record, we have a proportionate and robust policing operation to ensure the safety and security of all participants at the count. And then the acting returning officer, so the person that reads out who wins what, he's the council official that's in charge of the whole by-election, in this case, Ian Davidson, he said that it was Farage's decision whether or not to attend and that came from Nigel himself. So, you know, it seems to Harriet that there's always some kind of quirk or twist or drama when it comes to Nigel Farage.

3:43Harriet Harman: Nothing ever just kind of goes normally, although this was never really a normal by-election.

3:47Ruth Davidson: Yes, and the issue of him not showing up for the announcement of the result of the by-election, which he had caused by resigning and which he'd stood in and which he'd won, is absolutely unprecedented with the exception of Bobby Sands, who ran for election but who obviously didn't go to the count because he was in prison at the time. But otherwise, it's always been regarded as a courtesy to the voters that if you've asked for their vote, you show up to hear the results being read out by the official who's conducting the election, which is the returning officer, to hear the results. So once again, Nigel Farage is showing that the normal rules of doing things don't apply to him.

4:30Harriet Harman: We've had a few close calls. There was a point during the night in 2024 that we didn't think that Liz Truss would get on the stage when she lost her seat, if you remember. her. That constituency result took ages to get called and apparently it's because she would not stand on the stage. But yeah, first time since, what was it, 81 for Bobby Sands. So it's a pretty big precedent. Luke, you're here to do the numbers for us. Give us a rundown in Clacton and give us some of the trivia as well, because this is an election that had a whole host of subplots and minor storylines going into it as well. Yeah, absolutely.

5:05So I think the first thing to look at was the turnout. So turnout dropped to 44 % in this by-election. That's down from 59 % at the general election. That's actually a lower drop in turnout than I was expecting for an election, a by-election in the middle of August that wasn't being contested by the main political parties. And I think that's quite important for us to look at as we then go through the candidate results. So Nigel Farage gets 22 ,000 votes, just over 63 % of the vote. That's up in raw votes from 21 ,000 in 2024. So he adds 1 ,000 votes to his total. In second place was Count Binface with 9 ,455 votes.

5:57That's 27 % of the vote.

6:00Harriet Harman: And a new record for Count Benfist because he's stood in a lot of elections and he's never really got up into the close to five figures. He's never got more than 1 % in a contest before. But this is actually another record. This is the strongest performance, we think, for a comedy candidate in recent history. So we found that the monster raving loony party, I think, got just over 4 % in the Rotherham by-election in 1994. 1994. That looks like it's the best performance in a parliamentary contest for a comedy candidate before this one. So he's massively exceeded that. Of course, comedy candidates have done well elsewhere.

6:40Hartlepool famously electing... Well, Hangers the Monkey. Was that him? Hangers the Monkey, the club mascot, as mayor there. So again, you know, my takeaway, just just looking at those numbers is that there's kind of two stories. I think Farage will be pleased with that raw vote total. To get 22 ,000 people to come out and vote for you in the middle of summer, I think is pretty impressive. Where I think he'll be disappointed, though, is with the overall vote share, because Clacton is, or was, in the 2024 general election, the most right-leaning constituency and seen the country. The combined vote for the Tories and reform was the highest of anywhere.

7:25And that was at 74%. So given the Tories weren't standing, the fact that he's dropped to 63%, I think it's quite significant because it shows there are Tories in that seat who said, I'm not going out to vote for him. I also think that that bin face number will worry him. Why? Why? Because nearly 10 ,000 people went out and voted for this comedy joke candidate. And I think what it shows us is, yes, Nigel Farage has a very engaged base who will turn out for him, but so will his opponents. The fact that, again, during August, nearly 10 ,000 people turn out to vote for BinFace, I think is really significant.

8:08And of course, that doesn't matter in somewhere like Clacton, where it has such a strong rightward lean. But what it means in other seats that are more marginal is Farage is juicing up his opponents, and they will vote in many cases for whoever the stock Farage candidate is. And so I think they are the numbers that will worry him.

8:29Harriet Harman: And if you take that, Luke, if I'm just doing a bit of mental maths in my head then, and I know you can't really compare by-elections with by-elections and apples with oranges in different parts of the country. But that kind of coalition of anti-Farage votes, along with actually what we saw in Andy Burnham's by-election, this idea that Restore Britain, this party that Rupert Lowe runs, who used to be a Reform MP and has set up his own party after he left that party, and that it runs to the right of Nigel Farage, could take a significant number of votes. It means, weirdly, we've talked about how Farage squeezes the Tories and squeezes Labour, but actually he's also being squeezed.

9:09Yeah, absolutely. And I think the most striking example of that, obviously there was Makerfield, but that Greater Manchester mayoral by-election where Restore get nearly 10 % of the vote, I think that is a real challenge for reform and for Nigel Farage. And it is clear, you know, we think, you know, there's certainly around a quarter of reform's 2024 votes. These are the votes that Reform thought they had in their bag, the ones they won last time and now they were focusing on the new votes. About a quarter of his 2024 vote are quite attracted to that restore proposition. Some of them want Nigel Farage to embrace the things that he has traditionally drawn a line on, you know, around ethno-nationalism, around Tommy Robinson, around not condoning over racism in the party.

9:57Actually, you've got this chunk of Reform supporters who want something more hardcore. And then on the other side, you've got what I call the reform waverers, that group who have been pushing reform higher in the polls, didn't vote for them last time, might have voted for them this time. It's just going, oh, I'm not quite sure. I've got a bit of a pause that I didn't have before. So it's a sort of irony that reform is almost facing the same pincer movement that we were talking about facing the Tories, that we were talking about facing Labour between the Greens and reform. Actually, it's now happening to reform too.

10:34Harriet Harman: Well, I think what's interesting, Harriet, is we're talking about a by-election where none of the main political parties stood. So Labour didn't stand a candidate, Conservatives didn't stand a candidate, nor did the Lib Dems, nor did the Greens. Looking at this result now, 63 % of the vote, 44 % turnout. Farage will claim it as a massive victory, even if he didn't turn up to his own victory party. Do you think the parties were right, Harriet, in retrospect?

10:56Ruth Davidson: I think one of the things I've been asking myself is, what will Farage have achieved? What is different after this by-election compared to before the by-election? Well, obviously, he's got himself re-elected, but before he was an MP anyway. And I think that he's demonstrated that even though a standards investigation was underway in relation to this£5 million donation gift that he received, the voters of Clacton have actually doubled down and they voted for him again because, as Luke, you said, it was a relatively high turnout and they've given him their backing of even more voting for him than actually voted for him in the general election.

11:41Ruth Davidson: But I'm wondering whether or not there's going to be a divergence here where the people of Clacton are saying, actually, we don't care that he took£5 million in order, perhaps the accusation is by somebody who's giving him the money in order to actually get positive policy proposals on cryptocurrency. We don't care about the idea that people who are very rich can buy policy and buy politicians by giving them large amounts of money. It might be Clacton says that, but I think for the rest of the country, there is a concern about not having money buying politics. So it might be that whilst he's doubled down in Clacton, he's cast more doubt into the minds of these wavering people that Luke's talked about as to whether or not they really do want somebody who's saying, these rules, we don't care about money and politics, because I think that probably most people do.

12:38Ruth Davidson: I mean, there is a smaller side issue about whether we really want elections where we've got more than 30 candidates on the ballot paper. And the reason why we've got that is because the deposit is relatively low. You only have to pay£500 to get your name on the ballot paper. And the question is whether we want to have a very low financial threshold so everybody can be standing and nobody can be deterred by money, or whether or not we actually allow the system to be jumped on by people who are using it just for publicity, not really for serious electoral purposes. But that is a kind of side, a small side issue.

13:16Harriet Harman: I'm just really interested in Harriet's point, Luke, about this idea that people in Clacton are giving him the benefit of the doubt. You've spent some time there, you've done some polling there. Are they voting for him now because they're, you know, they're faragistas, they're big into reform, because we've had a lot of publicity over the small boats, and because nothing's been proven. Were there some people that you found there for whom it would make a material difference if he was sanctioned or not sanctioned? People, understandably, weren't following all of the ins and outs. People didn't quite know the full details.

13:52Look, you know, in Clacton, there is a big group of people who are sort of Farage true believers, more than you find in other parts of the country, as you'd expect, given the makeup of the seat. And I remember one woman saying, you know, 5 million, you know, it almost makes me like him more because it shows that people are putting their faith in Nigel Farage and other people are just jealous. She was a bit of an outlier, I should say. But there was another big group for whom immigration was the big issue. In the focus groups we rang this week in every single one of the groups, that dinghy with 230 30-odd people on it coming over had clearly cut through and they saw Nigel Farage as the only way of dealing with it.

14:33I think the group I would be more worried about, and this is the group for whom things might materially change, were the group who, yeah, they didn't know the full details of the 5 million. They didn't necessarily think Farage had done anything worse than another politician. A few people compared it to the freebies, but they didn't understand why he hadn't declared it. And that was what the problem was for them, because, you know, we're Brits, we followed the rules, and they didn't like the idea that the process hadn't been followed. And they're also the group who are less sort of full-fat for Arja, more, give him a try, because, you know, how much worse can it get?

15:13And I think that group will be paying attention to the results of any investigation. I should say there was another group, and this was an absolutely fascinating focus group that I ran, which was of Tory 2024 voters. These were the people who Farage absolutely needs to win over on a sort of national level in Clacton. All of them said, when I asked, you know, can you name a politician who you liked? Margaret Thatcher was up there. So these weren't left-wing voters. But it was so interesting. They just couldn't get behind Nigel Farage or reform. They were sort of proper Tory institutionalists. And I was really struck.

15:55I thought in somewhere like Clecton, more of that group, that sort of legacy Tory group, would have gone to Farage. And yet they hadn't. Some even went for Camp Binface somewhat reluctantly. And I think that group do sum up a challenge for Farage because if you can't squeeze that legacy Tory vote in somewhere like Clecton, you've got a real problem.

16:15Harriet Harman: When the Tories aren't standing. Exactly. Exactly that. There was no Tory candidate for them to vote for. Even then, even in that situation, they were saying, we're not voting for him. Well, look, we've talked a bit and we've referenced the£5 million and we've talked about the standards investigation. But let's just kind of do a quick upsum of where we are, because like you say, Luke, not everybody has been following every single twist and turn of the story. So now that Nigel Farage has been returned as an MP, things start moving again because when he stepped down he was under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner so that was the parliament doing an investigation into the MP in fact it's because of that investigation that Faraj said he was going to stand he was going to go above the heads of the establishment he's going to take it to the people of Clacton and they would decide whether he would be a representative or not and that parliamentary standards investigation was looking into£5 million he received as a gift from a Thailand-based billionaire called Christopher Harbourn.

17:17Harriet Harman: Now, separate to that, we found out in recent weeks that the Metropolitan Police, so this is a police, a criminal investigation, into at least half a million pounds of donations to reform made by Fiona Cottrell, who is the mother of a convicted wire fraudster, a guy called George Cottrell, who is a really close Farage ally. Now, I think it's really important that we say that this money wasn't received by Nigel Farage when he was an MP. It was received before he was elected in 2024, before the general election. But the House of Commons rules state that anything in the 12 months on the run up to it that's over 300 quid has to be declared if people could think it would influence you or it could relate to political activity or things like that.

18:05Harriet Harman: So Farage's line in all of this has been that£5 million from Christopher Harbour was a personal gift, not a political donation. And that's why he didn't tell anyone about it. It's why he didn't register at the parliament. It's why it never came to light until much later.

18:20Ruth Davidson: So this is what Nigel Farage has said. He has said, and I quote, I have done no wrongdoing and followed the rules. It's now clear the establishment will stop at nothing to hurt reform, we want to smash their cosy consensus. This is important, isn't it? This comes right down to the crux of what the investigation is all about. Yes, Nigel Farage has tried to frame it as I took£5 million before I was an MP and I was entitled to take this money because I was under serious threat. That is not what the Standards Commissioner, who is an entirely independent person. He's not an MP. He's appointed as an independent person to do a job on behalf of Parliament.

19:03Ruth Davidson: But what the Standards Commissioner is looking into is the disclosure, the registration of that donation, not whether or not he was entitled to take that money and if so, what he was going to use it for, but actually disclosing. Now, if you're an ordinary person and you receive £5 million, you don't have any obligation to declare it to Parliament, obviously. But once you become an MP, you have obligations for registration. And those are retrospective. They date back to the 12 months before to stop people loading themselves up with money before they're an MP and then keeping it secret. So your obligation for registration is retrospective for 12 months.

19:47Ruth Davidson: And in fact, previously, last year, Nigel Farage hadn't made a declaration of a sum of over£100 ,000. And that came to light. And the commissioner said to him, right, you should have registered this money, and you didn't. And that's a breach of the code. But because it was only just over£100 ,000, and because Nigel Farage agreed to apologise, it was dealt with by way of what's called rectification, which means you put it on the register and you apologise. So we've already been through that with Nigel Farage on once, where he's breached the rules, but put it right.

20:25Harriet Harman: We've actually had one of our members on the members forum, Sean has been in touch, to say, when are we expecting to hear for the investigation? Yes, we know that if there's not rectification, they can then pass it on to the next stage. But when do we get that? And what

20:41Ruth Davidson: What is that next day, Harriet? The stage we're currently in is that the Standards Commissioner is investigating and he will be looking at all sorts of information and getting all sorts of evidence, including asking Nigel Farage for all sorts of evidence as well and giving him a list of documents that he needs to disclose to the Commissioner. Then he will decide whether or not it's a breach of the code. I would think it's almost inevitable it is. and he will also decide whether it's a serious breach that can't be dealt with by rectification and I would think it's almost inevitable that he would decide it's a serious breach at which point he does a report to the Standards Committee.

21:21Harriet Harman: And that's the one you used to chair, that's why you're the expert on this.

21:24Ruth Davidson: I did used to chair it. So once the Standards Commissioner has given his report to the Standards Committee which is half MPs and half independent members, they decide whether they agree with him that there's been a breach of the rules. And then if there has been a breach of the rules, it's down to them to decide what sanction to propose. And I think it's most likely that they would propose a sanction which is more than 10 days suspension, which would trigger the possibility of there being a petition, what's called a recall petition, where the voters in Clacton would have the opportunity. And if 10 % of them vote for a recall petition, that will trigger a by-election.

22:06Ruth Davidson: So if that's the sanction that is proposed by the Standards Committee, that goes to the House of Commons as a whole to decide whether they agree with the proposed sanction from the Standards Committee. And if the House of Commons as a whole agrees to it, then it triggers what's called the recall process. Now, that means if there is a recall petition and it is carried, and I think if you look at the number of people who voted for Count Bin face, it's almost inevitable that there would be a recall petition and that would trigger another by-election.

22:40Harriet Harman: And the threshold for that is you need 10 % to be able to do that recall. So to say, we're going to do this again, you know, the MPs are wrong and we're going to, you know, or at least that 10 % think he's a wrong and we're going to have a recall, we're going to have another by-election in the constituency.

22:57Ruth Davidson: I think if there is a by-election, inevitably, that all the other parties will feel they actually have to stand a candidate. They won't be able to boycott it like they did with the by-election which was caused by Nigel Farage's resignation. And if he gets re-elected in this subsequent by-election, then he comes back into Parliament and the slate is wiped clean. It will have been established that he has broken the rules seriously in relation to trying to keep this£5 million secret, that the voters in Clapton, if they re-elect him, don't care about that. But I think voters in other parts of the country might not agree with the voters of Clapton and might think this man is not suitable to be prime minister.

23:43Harriet Harman: Well, that's interesting because one of the things that I heard from all pollsters, not just more in common, on the run up to the 2024 general election was that if there was a none of the above party, it would have done very well because people were sick to the back teeth of the Tories. They actually weren't that enthused by Labour. The Lib Dems were off Lib Deming, wherever the Lib Dems Lib Dem. But there was just a general kind of, the world's a bin fire, the politicians are crap, why don't we have any big figures that we used to? And that actually quite a lot of the none of the above voters went to Nigel Farage and went to reform as something new, shiny, different.

24:23Harriet Harman: But presumably, if reform and Farage and others seem to be troughing, hands on the till, just like everybody else, if they don't seem to be something different, presumably that dents the hopes of reform, you know, outperforming everybody else at the next election, which is what they've stated that their aim is and to make Nigel Farage Prime Minister. I think you've hit the nail on the head there. The danger to Farage with the 5 million is, fairly or not, not that people think that this makes him somehow worse than other politicians and the rest of the political class, but that it makes him the same as the rest of the political class, that he's a politician who is just in it for himself, that he's just trying to get what he can out of it.

25:10That is really dangerous to Farage because for so many people, exactly as you say, his appeal. And I speak to people who like Faraj for this reason all the time who say, look, I'm voting for him because we've had the Tories, we've had Labour, it hasn't worked, they don't deliver for us. We need something new, we need something different. And I think that the danger of this 5 million is that, as I say, people compare it to things like the freebies, they compare it to some of those. I mean, I've had groups where people have compared it to the PPE scandal and they just start to go, oh goodness, this is going to be more of the same as well.

25:48And it comes at the same time as reform are getting a bitter blowback from some people we speak to for having been seen to take in so many ex-Tories as well. So Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and others, that also reinforces this idea of, well, these guys said they weren't the establishment, and yet aren't they now starting to look a bit like the establishment? So on a whole series of levels, Farage risks looking like more of the same. And the third dimension, you know, I've often said voters like politicians. I think I said it on this podcast talking about Keir Starmer. They like politicians who look like they're enjoying the job, that look like they're engaging with it.

26:30This slightly more grumpy, angry, sometimes snappy side of Farage, including two co-hosts of this podcast, in some questions, I think goes down much less well.

26:43Harriet Harman: Beth can get under his skin, can't she? She could give him a little bit of a prod. She properly asks the tough questions to everybody, but he does seem remarkably thin-skinned and seems to think that he's being singled out when he's getting the same treatment as everybody else and the same scrutiny that all other political leaders face daily. And the reason that it's so damaging is to go into that being seen as something different. What do people say about Farage in focus groups they tend to like? Well, he says it like it is. He answers the question. He engages. If he looks like he's not doing that, that's another area where he looks like more of the same.

27:15So you've got these three things now which risk pushing reform into that danger zone for them, which is, are they just another form of the establishment?

27:24Harriet Harman: Do you know, I thought one of the most telling points in this entire by-election was when, just, you know, in the last 24 hours, you had Nigel Farage telling people that a man dressed as an intergalactic space warrior with a bin on his head was, and I'll give you a direct quote here, the candidate of the establishment. Because against party leader and multiple MEP, now an MP, you know, it's just, it's so absurd. Like, and the ability to kind of turn that on its head, this idea that this, you know, straight, white, well-known, sort of affluent man walking around in his cromby overcoat and tweed sort of trousers and all the rest of our cords, corduroys, was calling this joke candidate the establishment because anti-establishmentarianism is his shtick.

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28:54Ruth Davidson: Hi, producer Minty here. I just wanted to tell you about our members club, Sky News Insider, which gives you access to a bonus episode of electoral dysfunction every Tuesday and means you can listen to all of our content ad-free. And if you didn't already know, original dysfunctioner Jess Phillips is back for some of those bonus episodes. It's$2.99 a month, and it's not just us you get. If you also listen to our sister podcast Trump 100 or Ed Conway's Stuff Matters, you'll also get all of their episodes ad-free and access to bonus content. You'll also get access to a host of new ways to interact directly with Beth, Ruth, Harriet, Jess and us, the team behind the pod.

29:30Ruth Davidson: Terms and conditions apply. You can only become an insider if you're over the age of 18 and live in the UK. Subscription auto-renews at the regular price unless cancelled via My Account. Cancel any time effective at the end of the billing period. Okay, that's enough from me. Back to the pod.

29:49Harriet Harman: We're back. And before we get on to Luke, to look at broader polling, let's just have a little mention for our members episode from Tuesday. It was me and Jess. We had a good old chat about the early release scheme and the rights and wrongs of the Prime Minister having a holiday. And also a bit of chat about our own holidays and whether you want your constituents to know if you're in some place that seems a little bit exotic or whether you want them to think that you're doing a Gordon Brown and having a quiet couple of days in Dorset. If you've got a little bit of FOMO about not hearing that show when it dropped, don't worry about it.

30:23Harriet Harman: Come to our Insider Club. There's a link beneath the show notes. That gets you into our members forum. If you're an insider, you can chat to each other. You can get questions onto the regular shows and you can listen to all those extra episodes that we do earlier in the week. Right, well, we've had a thorough discussion about Nigel Farage's win in Clacton. But look, there's also questions about reform's performance in the polls, whether they've hit a ceiling, whether the Burnham bounce is real. Can you take us through what is going on? Is there a reform slump or is it just that the other two parties are kind of catching up a bit?

30:56No, it's very definitely the case that reform are down off their highs. And if we flip back to almost exactly this time last year, you remember Nigel Farage was doing those weekly press conferences, He was absolutely dominating the agenda. If you looked at the polls in late summer and autumn last year, you had reform getting up into 30%, 31%, 32%, 33%, which in a fragmented electorate was very much majority territory. Since then, it has started to tick down their vote share. So actually, before Andy Burnham comes in, before any of that, you start to see them dropping into the high 20s in lots of polls.

31:36now post Andy Burnham coming in. They're in the mid and actually in some cases low 20s. While at the same time, Andy Burnham has very definitely given the Labour Party a bounce. So in our latest poll, Labour are actually ahead of reform by two points, 27 to 25. There was a YouGov poll out this week, similar, although slightly different shares. Labour are ahead by 2, 24 to 22. And the Tories seem to have stabilised somewhere around 20, 21, 22 % as well. There was even a Lord Ashcroft poll which put reform in third behind Labour and the Conservatives. So I don't want to over-reg it. Reform, they're still in the mid to low 20s, but they very definitely lost support.

32:30The other thing that has happened, and this links to what we were just talking about, This time last year, Nigel Farage's personal approval ratings were about break-even. He was just below there. He's always had a lot of detractors.

32:45Ruth Davidson: And that's pretty good because politicians aren't actually that well-liked. Exactly. That means the number of people who like him and the number of people who don't like him. Exactly. It was roughly even, which for someone polarising like Farage is pretty good going. Since then, his personal approval ratings have been on a bigger slump than Reform's overall polling drop. In fact, in our polling, not this week, but a couple of weeks ago, he reached his lowest score since the general election. He's now somewhere around minus 30 net approval, along with Zach Polanski, who is down low as well. Whilst at the same time, Kemi Bejanok has moved up significantly from this time last year.

33:27She's now just positive. I think she's on plus one in our latest polling. And Andy Burnham has had a really big bounce, particularly compared to Keir Starmer, who is in the minus 40s. He was really in the danger zone territory. Andy Burnham is on plus 14, which is really, really good for a politician in our current environment. So it's not just the party ratings which have changed, it's the personalities as well.

33:50Harriet Harman: Can I just ask you, Harriet, and there must be a bit of a sigh of relief from particularly the Parliamentary Labour Party, because one of the things that I kept hearing from your colleagues was this sense that there was a real sense of responsibility within Labour that they couldn't be the government that handed the country to reform. You had to do something when it looked like reform were running away in the polls and that they could actually win a general election.

34:14Ruth Davidson: Well, I think there is huge relief in the Parliamentary Labour Party and also optimism that things can get better because there's one thing which is the standing in the polls, the snapshot which Luke has been talking about. But there's also, as you've intimated, Luke, the question of direction of travel and momentum is everything in politics. So that if you're on the way down, then people start arguing. it's very easy to keep your unity if you're insurgent and you're moving ahead. Everybody sticks together. Success is a great builder of further success. But if you're starting to go down in the polls like Reform R, they're starting to fall out with each other and that makes them even less effective.

34:59Ruth Davidson: So it becomes a vicious circle. On the other hand, with Labour, with Andy Burnham having strong personal ratings and that actually helping the party's ratings, There's more reason for everybody to glue together, to work together as a team and to be able to build that sense of optimism, which is one of the things that Andy Burnham said when he became an MP. He wanted to make the country feel optimistic and not pessimistic, as he felt it had been under Keir Starmer. So the direction of travel and momentum is everything. It's interesting about the Tories because Kemi Badenoch also seems to be ahead of her party.

35:36Ruth Davidson: but we've talked a lot about the ceiling on reform voters, that they've got a very passionate core but can they spread that wider or is there a ceiling? We've seen in by-elections that there can be an anti-reform coalition which puts a cap on reform's progress but also there seems to be a little bit of stickiness about the Conservatives' vote because although Kemi Badenog is doing better in terms of public opinion, her party is still quite stuck. So I think it's really all to play for for Andy Burnham. A lot of people have been saying, right, Andy Burnham must now take the fight to reform. He must criticise reform.

36:20Ruth Davidson: I think actually what he's got to do is be a cracking good prime minister. What we find in our polling is there is a big group of people who are now mostly voting reform whose primary priority is to defeat Labour. That is what they want. And whoever looks like the best vehicle to defeat Labour, they will flock to. So that's why it matters so much in that Tory reform battle, who comes second or third. And if reform do slip, and look, there's no sign of it across multiple polls yet, you'd still rather be reform as the party on the right. But if they did slip into third, things could collapse pretty quickly because a lot of those and voting reform as the way to get a right-wing government would flip back to the Tories.

37:07Ditto, I think this was the danger for the Tories this time last year when they looked like they were floundering that the bottom could have fallen out very quickly. So absolutely that, how you define the race at the next general election really matters. And that also applies on the left. And I think what's so interesting if you look at our polling is where has Andy Burnham made the biggest gains? It is from winning back Green and Liberal Democrat voters who now have come back to this idea of actually Andy Burnham is going to give us kind of what we thought we'd get with a Labour government. That has seen the Greens sort of dropping out of contention and more people saying in focus groups, well, I have to vote Labour because they're the way to stop reform, which you weren't getting.

37:52I've got a naughty question, or at least it's a naughty thought.

37:56Harriet Harman: And I'd be interested on your views on it, the pay review, which is one of the things that all MPs and politicians can do, even if they're thundering dolts, is that they have an innate sense of self-preservation of what's going to keep them elected. They know how to count and they know how to read a poll. And if, you know, political leaders are generally pretty secure if their poll numbers are higher than the number of the party, no one's going to try and oust Kenny Badenoch or Andy Burnham when they've got the poll numbers as they are. What's really interesting when we've been talking about Farage is that we've always assumed that any of the electoral vehicles that he's had, and he started all of these parties himself and led them all himself, is that he's the master of all he surveys.

38:39Harriet Harman: And I do wonder now that reform has big figures who like to be outspoken, the Richard Tyses, the Zaya Yousafs, the Robert Jenricks, who are ambitious for themselves as well as the party, if they see Farage's numbers hitting a ceiling or they see him as the factor which stops them breaking over and becoming a true party, because yes, they're polling very well, but they still only have the number of MPs in the Commons that you can count on your fingers. If they see them as stopping that big breakthrough happening, could you see them mount a coup on Farage, even though we've always thought he was the dominant force in everything that he does.

39:15The interesting thing is we asked a poll question last week, which was about whether people trusted the leader more than the party, or did they trust the leader more, the party more, or both equally? And in Andy Burnham's case, as you might imagine, people were much more likely to say they trusted him more than trusted the party more, his personal brand stronger. Kemi Beidnok, actually to a lesser degree, but still the same people were more likely to say that they trusted Kemi Beidinok more than trusted the party more. In Nigel Farage's case, that wasn't the case. And I was really surprised when I got that finding back because for so long, as I say, we've seen Nigel Farage as the sort of engine of reform there.

39:57It's also the case, again, talking to members of the public, some of those other figures are starting to cut through. Zia Youssef in particular comes up in some focus groups. But the question is, can any of them keep together the coalition that Nigel Farage formed with the sort of more moderate waving, we in our segmentation sort of rooted patriot red wall voters, with the people who are sort of traditional conservatives, with the people who would want something much more full fat. Nigel Farage manages to keep most of them in a tent. Robert Jenrick, I don't think, can do that. I think he loses some of the voters that reform's got from the left.

40:35He perhaps loses some of those more full-fat ones. Zia Yusuf might shore up your full-fat flank, but lose some of those. People think, oh, he just goes too far sometimes. So it's less about the individuals and their cut-through, and then can they appeal to a broad base? And I don't yet see anyone else in reform that can do that.

40:54Ruth Davidson: I completely agree with everything that you've said there, Luke. And I can imagine that if Nigel Farage either gets pushed out or feels he doesn't want to do it anymore and he wants to go off to America and make money, there would be such a drama in reform that actually those people who felt they trusted the party would see such a shambles that it's really hard to imagine that how it would sustain its position and whether or not actually lock, stock and barrel, many of them would move over to restore.

41:24Harriet Harman: Well, like I say, it is never dull in British politics. So that is all from us today. We're going to be back on Tuesday for our members episode. If you'd like to listen to that,

41:32Ruth Davidson: you can find details of how to subscribe in the show notes. And do get in touch. If you're one of our members, you can find a link to the shiny new members forum in the show notes or the burner phone is still in action. That is 07934 2444.

41:47Harriet Harman: Let's say thanks to Luke. And that is goodbye from us from now. Goodbye. Goodbye.

41:54you