Yet another busy week in British politics, and we’ve got plenty of great new research to share with you. In this week's newsletter:
Will Nigel Farage's finance row move the dial? Our research suggests that Reform’s base might be unmoved by the scandal, but his shine could be wearing off with some swing voters.
What might happen in Clacton? Will the Reform leader's by-election gamble pay off, or could it backfire?
The Birth of Distrust: How failures in maternity care can erode women's trust in government.
The politics of a heatwave: How Britons describe the heat, and how scorching summers can shape how people feel about climate politics.
An invitation: Our webinar next Thursday
As always, you can hear us talk about all of this in The Opinion Brief podcast below:any ot
Will Nigel Farage's finance row move the dial? Just before Nigel Farage resigned as Clacton MP to fight in a by-election, we asked the public how they felt about the row over the £5 million gift that led to this. There’s been much debate about whether these scandals hurt Farage, with some suggesting that they are already ‘priced in’ with voters, while others think they could be his undoing. From our conversations with the public, we think there are three distinct audiences worth separating out here, because the row is landing differently with each of them.
The first group is those who already dislike Farage, and they're hardening in their opposition. Overall, the public has grown more critical since the story first broke: the share saying the £5 million gift reflects badly on Farage has risen from 48 per cent in May to 57 per cent in July. The risk for Farage here is that - in a General Election - he is so polarising to these voters that they are both willing to turn out and vote tactically to defeat Reform, in the way we saw in Makerfield, Gorton and Denton and Caerphilly.
The second is his base - those who voted for him in 2024, when Reform’s national support was half of what it is today. On this scandal at least, it looks like these voters haven’t moved. Three-quarters of 2024 Reform voters (74 per cent) say it hasn't hurt their view of him, including 40 per cent who say it's had no effect whatsoever, and just 23 per cent say it's damaged their opinion of him. In his passionate speech on Monday, it seemed like Farage was speaking to these voters. For this group, a high-profile fight with the establishment likely galvanises their support - and in Clacton specifically, there are enough of these voters that it’s unlikely the scandal could have cost him the seat (more on this below).
But Clacton isn't the country. Nationally, the group that might worry Farage most beyond his immediate by-election are - the movable middle - voters who might consider Reform but could be put off by scandals like this. This includes many 2024 Conservatives who Reform will need to run up the score with, in a General Election - but half of these voters now say that the Farage scandal has damaged their view of him.
Reform’s newer voters and considerers that would take them from the 15 per cent they scored in 2024 to a majority, are less certain in their view that Farage is fundamentally different to other politicians: while 57 per cent of 2024 Reform voters say Farage is less corrupt than other politicians, that falls to 42 per cent among his newer supporters, who are also twice as likely to say "don't know". This could mean that Farage risks looking like ‘more of the same’ rather than something genuinely new with this group. Alternatively, given they think most politicians are corrupt, they could overlook any Farage scandals because it’s no different to what they perceive others to do.
Benchmarking Farage against Burnham’s “for us” slogan, three in five Britons say Farage is in politics for himself, versus a quarter who say “for us”. But it’s worth pointing out that Farage is not the exception here - he performs worse than other politicians, but across Badenoch, Davey, Polanski and even Burnham himself, Britons are more likely to believe politicians are in it for themselves than for the public. And interestingly, it is Badenoch who performs narrowly better than the other leaders on this question.
What might happen in Clacton?
In the Spectator this week I wrote a piece about Farage’s big Clacton gamble, and whether it will pay off or backfire.
Of course, even before the other parties dropped out, the big risk for Farage wasn’t losing. Clacton is about as good as it gets for Reform. Our MRP model suggests concern about immigration there is the second-highest of any constituency in the country - 65 per cent of residents call it a top issue, against a national average of 48 per cent. Three quarters of Clacton residents voted for Brexit (the third highest in the country), and it was one of the only two seats that UKIP ever won in an election.
Looking at our Seven Segments, 57 per cent of Clacton residents belong to the segments that make up Reform’s current voter coalition - Rooted Patriots, Traditional Conservatives, and Dissenting Disruptors - compared to 48 per cent in Britain overall. Dissenting Disruptors, who make up nearly 40 per cent of Reform’s coalition, are far more likely to be found in Clacton (28 per cent) than Britain as a whole (20 per cent).
And most significantly, Reform are going into this by-election from a higher base than any other by-election before it. Reform UK have improved their vote share since 2024 in every by-election they’ve contested, but have won only one seat – Runcorn & Helsby. Although Reform have suffered a string of defeats in recent by-elections, Clacton is a much more friendly environment for the party – they received 46% of the vote in 2024, 2.5x more than in Runcorn & Helsby in 2024.
In this context, the suggestion that Count Binface could win the by-election is far-fetched and overegging Binface may risk other parties/commentators looking as though they are mocking the people of Clacton, which for some will make the Reform leader’s point. The biggest challenger to Farage might be turnout: by-election turnout is almost always lower than General Election (Makerfield being a recent exception), and it might be hard to motivate voters to show up when the result looks so inevitable.
The risk for Farage is not losing, but that his victory just feels like a damp squib. That may change if more high profile backers get behind any of the joke and fringe candidates, allowing Farage to make the case they are the establishment’s choice.
This week, we were joined on the podcast by Anna McShane, director at the New Britain Project, to discuss a piece of research we released in April - The Birth of Distrust - which looks at how experiences of maternity care failures can undermine trust in the NHS, government and healthcare.
The central finding is that a bad birth stays with you. Three in four women who had a poor birth experience say it reduced their trust in the NHS, and 58 per cent say the same of their trust in Government. Nearly half (48 per cent) say they're now more anxious about healthcare settings generally, and a quarter of mothers overall - rising to 49 per cent among those who rated their birth as poor - say the experience made them less likely to want more children.
There's a financial security dimension running through all of it. 69 per cent of financially struggling women say some part of their birth was poor, against 36 per cent of financially comfortable women. But as Anna McShane tells us in the pod, what was particularly striking about the research is the sense of fatalism many mothers now feel: 37 per cent of recent mothers say it wouldn't be worth complaining about a poor experience, rising to 57 per cent among those report having had one.
What would help, according to the women themselves, is continuity of care - having the same midwife throughout pregnancy and birth is the single most commonly cited fix, named by 30 per cent overall and 41 per cent of financially insecure mothers. As the report puts it: “if birth is where trust is first broken, it can also be where it's rebuilt”. You can listen to Anna McShane talking about the research with Rhiannon on this week’s episode.
And read the full report, Birth of Distrust, here:
Last weekend, we asked Britons to describe in a word how they feel about the heatwave. The top answer, unsurprisingly, was “hot”, followed by “uncomfortable”, “unbearable”, “exhausted”, “worried” and “concerned”.
Our latest polling with Uplift digs into that concern, and how it might be shaping climate politics in Britain.
In focus groups over the last week, people have described the misery and anxiety that comes from trying to cope with the heat.
“It was horrific with a newborn. I was beside myself worrying that she was going to overheat and we are breastfeeding as well, so you're just both getting hotter with the body heat. It was just grim. Everyone was irritated. So I'm glad it's cooled down”. - Kara, 38, Conservative voter, Sceptical Scroller, Rochdale
Our polling found that Britons are worried about this becoming the new normal for our summers.
Two thirds of Britons (66 per cent) are worried about unbearably hot weather becoming more frequent. That concern spans party lines, including 52 per cent of Reform UK voters. Yet most people don't think Britain is ready for it: 84 per cent say the UK is unprepared to cope with extreme heat, more than say the same of water shortages (77 per cent), flooding (75 per cent) or storms (66 per cent), and over half (51 per cent) call the UK "very unprepared."
Six in ten want the Government to do more: 59 per cent say it should do more to help people cope with extreme heat, 26 per cent want things to stay as they are, and just 5 per cent want less done.
“I do worry about it if it's going to get hotter and more consistently because the UK, like we've spoke about, it’s not built for hot weather… places I work like a lot of schools are going to and other public council buildings, a lot of them don't have air con. It's really warm in there.” - Duncan, 28, Labour to Reform, Dissenting Disruptor, Pontefract and Castleford
“I think for me it's even deeper. It's more about institutions because it is going to get hotter. So I'm thinking in the future, I mean the schools, the hospital, the care homes. I can't even imagine how the older people kind of cope. So yeah, I think we're going to have more heat waves. But yeah, it's more about institutions because private people they can, maybe in the future they're going to have, they have grants for whatever kind of stuff”. - Saher, 50, Conservative and now unsure, Established Liberal, Bury South
Webinar invitation: No time for a honeymoon: what do Britons want from Burnham?
With Andy Burnham just days from Number 10, More in Common and UCL Policy Lab invite you to a webinar sharing our latest research on what Britain wants from his premiership.
Thursday 16 July, 12:00 - 13:00
Join More in Common and UCL Policy Lab as we present brand new research on how Britain is reacting to Andy Burnham's rise to the Labour leadership.
We'll explore whether he can unite a fractured Labour coalition, how his popularity compares to Keir Starmer's, and what the public expects him to deliver, and how quickly.
We'll share brand new research during the webinar, including:
New polling on how Britons view Andy Burnham, and how his approval compares to Keir Starmer's across Labour's fractured 2024 coalition.
New focus group research with Labour switchers and loyalists on what they want to see.
Analysis of the policy platform Britons want from Burnham, from the cost of living and tax to devolution and Number 10 North.
Register for the webinar below. Hope to see you there!
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