The next UK general election is almost certainly heading for a hung parliament. On that point, the evidence is now overwhelming — and it is precisely this reality that exposes the fundamental weakness at the heart of Reform UK’s apparent polling success.
Yes, Reform may lead many headline voting intention polls. But Britain does not elect governments on national vote share alone. Under first-past-the-post, power flows from seats, alliances and, crucially, from who can command the confidence of the House of Commons. And on that measure, the outlook for Reform is bleak.
The most recent YouGov polling doesn’t just underline the likelihood of a hung parliament, it shows how politically isolated Reform would be in one. When voters were asked which potential governing coalitions they would support, a Reform–Conservative alliance with Nigel Farage as prime minister came fifth. Not first. Not second. Fifth.
That single finding matters more than any raw voting intention number. Because in a hung parliament, governing is not about who tops the poll, it’s about who can build a majority that the public can tolerate.
Reform cannot do that.
The Conservatives, Reform’s only plausible partner, are facing an extinction-level collapse. Conservative Partypolling languishes in the teens, sometimes lower, and their ability to deliver seats at scale is rapidly evaporating. Even combined, Reform and the Conservatives struggle to reach a credible governing position, and even if the arithmetic worked, the public clearly doesn’t like the idea.
Meanwhile, every other viable grouping in a hung parliament, Labour-led arrangements, centre-left cooperation, or issue-by-issue confidence deals, consistently outpolls a Farage-led Reform–Tory bloc.
This brings us back to a line that neatly captures Reform’s dilemma: “With no friends and many enemies, they’ll never win power.” In a fragmented parliament, that isn’t rhetoric, it’s arithmetic.
Hung parliaments reward parties that can compromise, cooperate and build bridges. Reform has built its brand on doing the opposite. It thrives on opposition, grievance and ideological purity, all of which play well in opinion polls, but disastrously in coalition politics.
So while Reform supporters may celebrate leading vote share snapshots, they are losing badly in the one poll that really matters: public support for governing arrangements in a hung parliament. And since a hung parliament now looks all but inevitable, that failure is likely to prove decisive.
Reform may be loud, popular and disruptive. But in the Britain we are heading towards, fractured, plural and parliamentary, that will not be enough.