Cast your mind back less than three weeks, and you’ll remember the news was awash with talk of historic local election results for Reform.
Nigel Farage was claiming the results were the end of two-party politics and a “truly historic shift” in British politics.
Whilst there’s no denying Reform made impressive gains, the underlying numbers did suggest it perhaps wasn’t the game-changing breakthrough the party would have you believe.
Nevertheless, Reform won hundreds of seats across the UK and in the wake of the elections seemed to experience a bounce in polling.
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Last week (May 12), the party saw a three-point jump in support in YouGov’s polling of voting intention, taking them to 28%.
Well, it looks like that’s as good as their post-local election bounce got.
In YouGov’s polling this week, Reform’s support dropped by three points, leaving them back on 25%.
There were also small gains of one point for both the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems, whilst the Greens saw a one-point drop in support.
The sudden drop in support could be a sign that the continuing questions over Farage’s £5m payment from a crypto billionaire are taking their toll on Reform.
The more that gets uncovered about the money, gifted to Farage by Christopher Harborne in 2024 and which the Reform leader did not declare, the more questions Farage has to answer.
The most recent revelations are that Farage purchase a £1.4m property shortly after receiving the sum from Harborne.
Reform and Farage have said the property purchase had nothing to do with the money from Harborne, and was made using the fee the Clacton MP earned from his appearance on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
However, this week the Financial Times reported that Farage’s accounts cast doubt on this claim.
You can read more about that here.