Our Survey: Nigel Farage is likely to become PM, have some form of Tory support, and more senior Tories will defect

Nigel Farage is very quiet at the moment.

Keeping a low profile. Not his style at all.

One of the most influential politicians of the last quarter century is desperate to persuade anyone who comes looking right now, that he is literally a fish out of water: That not only does he not have, but never really did have, gills.

Sadly for him that’s not true. There were two in his operation of the past.

One, Nathan, a leader in Wales, was a very close ally and took bribes from pro-Russians to schill for Moscow on the floor of the European Parliament and has just been jailed for a decade for doing so. The other, John, is a universally decent and much liked chap who worked for years in the press office of various Farage outfits, and was paid completely legitimately to schill for Nigel.

However awkward this is for the Reform Party and Nigel personally – he was very close to Nathan but not so much in recent years  – however much Labour would love it to be the case we’ve yet to see it change the facts on the ground of a new political landscape.

Though it pains me to give Zia Yusuf the satisfaction of my admitting it, Reform are currently consistently top of the polling. They lead us, Labour and the Greens by about 10 percentage points, have done for a while, look likely to for a while, and people are having to get their head around Nigel Farage being the next Prime Minister, even if they’d hate the prospect.

When even the left are facing up to that reality, as they clearly are, you know it’s a realistic possibility.

It clearly is also for Conservative party members who responded to our latest survey:

53.9 Percent of members think it likely or highly likely Farage will be PM, to 43.3 percent who do not. There’s twice as many who think it highly likely than highly unlikely – and the lowest number is the ‘don’t knows’.

Now, the Chancellor may think she’s always been underestimated – personally I think we got her right from the get-go – but it has always been incredibly unwise to underestimate Farage, and survey responders clearly agree. His becoming Prime Minister cannot now be ruled out in the way it was many years ago when I vox-popped people for the BBC on the same question. He will love the comparison, but it was like Trump before he was President the first time.

Most thought it such a joke question many gave joke answers. Nigel isn’t joking now and he has the numbers to back it up. He thinks increasingly he can defeat all parties with very little help. However, I’ve said many times, not least to his face, if you go about for 18 months saying the Tories are dead, and deserve to be destroyed – do not be surprised if they don’t run to you with open arms and instead fight back. Hard.

Talk of deals has gone very quiet recently because the leaderships of either party have ruled it out, because Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage don’t actually like each other, because Zia Yusuf continues his daily online diet of saying how dead the Tories are, and frankly polling where they are, they don’t think they’ll need a deal.

Not so our Survey members, who clearly think that’s what the future holds:

This doesn’t tell us if they want these scenarios but what they think will happen regardless. Let’s not discount the 25 percent who think it’ll be a Reform majority, but for Conservatives the most interesting bit are the two results below that.

The almost doubled figure of 45 per cent of those who say “Confidence and Supply” not Coalition (24.4 per cent) chimes with what one very senior old school Tory told me last week:

“No deal before the election. Dust has to settle and numbers assessed much closer to the election than now, and obviously the same with a result, but it seems likely some form of co-operation will present itself whether people like it or not.”

They are by no means alone in privately suggesting such futures. A line that’s started to emerge from senior Tories recently is “Britain needs reform, I’m just not sure it needs Reform”

However it is to such senior Tories, committed Conservatives might want to cast an eye out for, as a result of our final finding.

It is undoubtedly true – but like Nathan Gill’s existence don’t expect Reform to confirm it openly – that Reform had expected more Tory defections by now. Danny Kruger remains the most significant so far, but clearly our survey members think that’s the start of the process not the end.

66.3 per cent of responders think more senior Tories will defect, and only 28.4 percent think it unlikely or highly unlikely. Our survey can’t tell who, we might ask next time, and what “senior” means here. It could be likely one or two defect without a trickle becoming a flood, or just as likely that this is only about “senior” Tories and discounts many councillors. candidates or MPs who might have been, or are considering making the jump.

In the face of this I’m reminded of what Kemi Badenoch told me just before a Conference that if it did anything raised her personal confidence levels – and her rating in our shadow cabinet survey:

“The thing is [defections are] still a stunt. If people want to be notches on Nigel Farage’s bedpost, I will remind them of people who went to Labour. The same thing happened when Labour was doing well last year, just before the election, we had Dan Poulter and Natalie Elphick crossed the floor. Lots of people run to the party they think is ahead, the party that was ahead last year is now very behind, everybody hates them [Labour] We’ve got, we need, people who believe in what we believe.”

Nothing in politics is truly inevitable, but amongst Tory party members a picture of the future is starting to form. We don’t know if it’s a picture they want, or a picture they simply see as the most likely reality. They say a week is a long time in politics, and there’s years to go yet, but for the Tory leader the picture painted is pretty stark.