Nigel Farage’s decision to stand as an MP could help Reform UK overtake the Tories in polls.
Polling in February looking at the potential effect of his return suggested that among the general public, the party would go from 19 per cent favourability to 25 per cent. At the time, the Tories were polling at 20 per cent.
In Clacton, polling suggests that Mr Farage would win the seat. Anthony Mack, Reform’s previous candidate, was forecast to come third after the Tories, who would win, on 38 per cent and Labour on 30 per cent.
However, polling by Survation in January suggested that if Mr Farage ran as the Reform candidate in the constituency, he would win 37 per cent of the vote, coming first and pushing down the Tories to 27 per cent and Labour to 23 per cent.
Giles Watling, the Conservative candidate, has a majority of more than 24,000 after picking up 72 per cent of the vote, meaning that Mr Farage would overturn one of the Tories’ biggest majorities.
Even before Mr Farage’s announcement, Rishi Sunak was worried about his party being squeezed on two sides, with Right-wingers leaving to join Reform and those on the Left turning to the Liberal Democrats or Labour.
It helps to explain why the Prime Minister is campaigning in Tory-held constituencies, putting his effort into holding those rather than trying to pick up seats from Labour.
Not only will the prospect of Mr Farage standing in a Conservative constituency raise the prospect of a high-profile loss on election night, but it will also raise the media profile of Reform throughout the next four weeks of the election campaign.
Mr Farage will be granted far more air time by the broadcast media – by far the most important way to gain traction.
He could also appear as the Reform UK participant in Friday’s BBC election debate, which pits the seven main British parties against each other.
Televised debates can sometimes change the mood of the electorate: as demonstrated by “Cleggmania” experienced by the Liberal Democrat leader in 2010. The party saw a surge in support after Nick Clegg impressed in the leader debates.
If he takes part, Mr Farage could also use the event to accuse Mr Sunak of running scared of the Reform UK threat – the Prime Minister has already said that he will not appear.
Penny Mordaunt will appear for the Tories and Angela Rayner will appear for Labour.
Mr Farage will also be hoping that his enhanced involvement will see an extra bounce for Reform UK in the polls.
For the past 18 months, Reform UK has been on the march, according to the Telegraph’s poll tracker.
When Mr Sunak took over as Prime Minister in October 2022, the party stood at about 4 per cent in the polls, well behind the Lib Dems.
His appointment gave the party a distinct boost – within three months they had reached 6 per cent and stayed that way for nine months.
In autumn last year, the party enjoyed a surge, reaching 10 per cent by February, when they overtook the Lib Dems.
They hit a high point of 12.5 per cent at the start of April, only weeks before the election was called.
Since then they have fallen back to 11 per cent, as some of voters returned to the Conservatives.
Reform UK strategists hope Mr Farage’s new role will help to reverse this fall.
However, under the first-past-the-post voting system, winning a parliamentary seat will be a hard task even for someone as well known as Mr Farage.
Although he managed to be elected to the European Parliament, he has never succeeded in a Westminster vote – despite no fewer than seven attempts.
His first attempt was at the Eastleigh by-election in 1994, where he stood for Ukip and picked up only 952 votes, losing his deposit and finishing just ahead of Screaming Lord Sutch for the Monster Raving Loony Party.
He stood at the next three general elections, for Salisbury, Bexhill and Battle, and South Thanet. He failed to receive more than 8 per cent of the vote in any of the three votes.
He did slightly better at the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election in 2006, and in 2010 he stood against John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons at the time, in Buckingham, where he took 8,410 votes, hours after being involved in a plane crash on election day.
Mr Farage’s most recent Westminster election battle was at South Thanet in 2015, where he took 16,026 votes and 32.4 per cent of the vote.
He came second to the Tories’ Craig Mackinlay, who won 18,838 votes. Mr Farage had promised to resign as Ukip leader if he lost, but he was soon back.
So could Mr Farage do better this time and take a seat off the Tories?
It would not be the first time that a Eurosceptic party has done this: in 2014, Douglas Carswell won Clacton with a massive 59.7 per cent of the vote after resigning as a Conservative and forcing a by-election. He held on at the 2015 general election.
There are signs that Mr Farage could eclipse Mr Carswell’s success. As well as the polling that suggested he would win Clacton if he stood, one YouGov poll earlier this year found that he was – on one measure, at least – the most popular politician in the country.
It found that 38 per cent of the public had a positive opinion of him; higher than any other politician. He beat Sir Keir Starmer, Lord Blunkett and Boris Johnson, all on 30 per cent.
However, despite his positive rating, he was still disliked by 42 per cent.
It seems reasonable to conclude that Mr Farage’s intervention will be damaging for the Tories, but exactly how destructive it will prove remains to be seen.
