New poll shows Reform would win fewer seats than Tories in General Election | News Politics

Andy Burnham has only been Prime Minister for a few months but eyes are already on a potential next general election.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch claimed that the Labour leader is a ‘gambler’ and suggested that he might ‘fancy his chances’ in an election.

When on LBC radio, she said: ‘I’ve said that if he cannot fund defence, which he needs to fund by cutting welfare, then he should call an election.

‘That’s why John Healey resigned. He said the money that was going into defence was not enough.’

She quipped that the Tories ‘fancy [their chances] as well’, having been in power for 14 years until Labour’s 2024 victory.

While Burnham hasn’t said he’s about to call an election, a major YouGov survey has suggested Labour would still be the largest party, followed by the Tories.

However, polls point to a hung parliament with Labour losing 170 seats, with Reform in third place.

Nigel Farage’s party is neck and neck with the Tories – respectively on 123 and 130 seats in the projection – which is far below the projection from last year.

YouGov suggested they would take 188 fewer seats than in the September 2025 version but also up from their actual number of five seats in 2024.

There are now eight Reform MPs, all of whom are Tory defectors, with Farage holding onto Clacton after the by-election against Count Binface.

However, even a projected Tory-Reform coalition would fail to pass the 326-seat bar for a majority in the House of Commons.

Badenoch did rule out a Tory coalition with Reform or the Lib Dems, saying: ‘It’s been done before, 1974. We had two elections. We had two elections in one year. 

‘But what I saw with the coalition 2010 to 2015 was actually us not being able to deliver many of the things that we promised people because we made concessions to the Lib Dems and nobody thanked us for it later.’

The survey suggested that unless Burnham could pull together a ‘rainbow coalition’ of left-wing parties, he would be unable to get a majority.

The projection also points to gains for the left, with Greens up from a projected seven to nine (they currently have five MPs).

Welsh national party Plaid Cymru also saw projected gains of nine seats, while the SNP could gain around 10 seats.

In more than a third of the seats, the winning margin was less than five points, showing just how conflicted the country is.

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