Starmer Out of Govt by Summer Says Farage as Eve-of-Election Polls Lines Up Reform For Major Gains This Week

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party remains first-place across Britain and ready to breakthrough in the devolved parliaments for the first time in the last polls before local elections take place nationwide on Thursday, votes that are being interpreted as a referendum on the performance of the left-wing Westminster government.

National opinion polling on the eve of the May 2026 local elections puts Nigel Farage’s Reform UK ahead of all other challengers, prompting the Brexit leader to hail his lead over the governing Labour Party who presently dominate the Westminster Parliament. Under British election law no polling can be published on election days. A big Reform victory on Thursday could see the Prime Minister out of office by the “middle of Summer”, the Brexit pioneer said.

Farage cited the new results from Deltapoll for The Daily Mirror on Wednesday afternoon, hailing the 29 per cent vote share. The poll, which at a 3,300 sample size is appreciably larger than most UK voting intention polls, put Labour trailing in second place on 21 per cent, and the Conservatives at 19 per cent.

The Green Party, who are challenging British politics from a hard-left Islamopopulist platform and who have been seen of something of a rising star of late, trailed in fourth at just 12 per cent.

This national voter intention numbers wouldn’t necessarily map onto the thousands of seats being challenged in mayoral, London borough, county council, local authority, and devolved parliament elections due to take place on Thursday, but the results nevertheless offer a helpful guide to where the country is politically on the eve of the votes.

Also publishing a final poll was YouGov, who also put Reform in the lead nationwide. Commissioned by The Times and Sky News, the YouGov poll put Farage’s Reform at 25 per cent, followed by Labour on a distant 18, and closely-grouped Conservatives on 17 and the Greens at 15.

YouGov also published race-specific polling for some of the most consequential votes coming on Thursday, to decide the new members of the regional devolved parliaments for Scotland and Wales. While these institutes have traditionally skewed to the left and been dominated by separatist movements, the polls show Farage’s Reform promises to make historic gains. While the prognostications suggest second-place finishes for Reform, the results would cement the party as a force present in all the home nations and keep the pressure on whatever governments might be formed in them.

In the Welsh Parliament (‘Senedd’), the Party of Wales (‘Plaid Cymru’) was predicted to come first place, displacing the long-dominant Labour Party, with a healthy 33 per cent of the vote. Reform are modelled to come in second at 29 per cent, but both parties come with a broad margin of error. YouGov said no overall control of the Welsh Parliament was the most likely outcome, with a left-wing coalition to follow.

A similar story beckons in the Scottish Parliament, where the Scottish National Party (SNP) is predicted to dominate, and Reform due to burst onto the scene at the cost of Labour and the Conservatives who the pollster says are “both on track for their worst Holyrood result to date”.

While Thursday’s elections in England, Scotland, and Wales are to select local candidates, the votes are very much being interpreted as a national referendum on the performance of the government, and the results are certain to set the mood music for the coming years. Speaking on Wednesday night, Mr Farage said a thumping defeat for Labour at this stage could bring down the government, given Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer already seems close to the edge.

He said: “all the evidence is we’re doing incredibly well in many, many traditional Labour areas. The kinds of parts of the country that they’ve dominated now for over a century”. Mr Farage noted Labour has “not lost an election for well over 105 years” in parts of Wales where he now believes his party can prevail tomorrow, adding: “the only way to get rid of this awful, unpatriotic Prime Minister is for people to go out, vote Reform tomorrow in big numbers… get a big success tomorrow against this Prime Minister, against this Labour Party, and he’ll be gone by the middle of summer”.