Polling shows that Keir Starmer is now far more hated by the UK public than all of his opponents, including Nigel Farage

So I've been meaning to mention this since the weekend.  The regular Opinium series of Britain-wide polls continues to be more favourable for Labour than polls from most other firms, although the latest one has the Labour lead down to 4 points, rather than the 6 or 7 points that has been typical with Opinium in recent times.  But what will concern Labour far more are three specific details from the leadership questions in the new poll.

Some analysts have argued for years that the best predictor of election results, or at least the best predictor months or years ahead of polling day, is not the standard voting intention numbers but instead the head to head question about which leader would be the best Prime Minister.  Opinium are now showing Keir Starmer just 5 points ahead of Kemi Badenoch on that question.

Who would make the best Prime Minister?

Keir Starmer (Labour): 23%

Kemi Badenoch (Conservatives): 18%

Now, OK, I suppose you could argue that this does put Labour ahead on the best indicator. But the point is that when Badenoch became Tory leader, Labour told themselves that Christmas had come early and that they'd just been handed a monumental advantage. In fact, their leadership advantage looks almost non-existent, because Starmer's slim lead is closely in line with Labour's lead in standard voting intentions.

But it gets even worse than that for Labour when you look at the net ratings of each leader, which subtract the percentage of respondents with a negative view from the percentage of respondents with a positive view.

Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats): 0

Kemi Badenoch (Conservatives): -6

Nigel Farage (Reform UK): -9

Rachel Reeves (Labour): -31

Keir Starmer (Labour): -32

Obviously this means that Starmer is far more hated than all of his opponents.  But what really stands out is Nigel Farage's rating in isolation.  It wasn't that long ago that Farage typically had abysmal net ratings - he had a substantial minority of the public who adored him (thus permitting his party to take first place in successive European elections on a low percentage vote and a low turnout), but they were easily outnumbered by the big majority who loathed him.  That put a natural ceiling on Reform's potential support, possibly in the mid to high 20s.

That ceiling seems to have been lifted, because now only 37% have a negative view of Farage. And it was reported a day or two ago that Elon Musk was considering giving Reform a massive donation of $100 million, which would make Reform by far the UK's richest party.

Money can't necessarily buy elections on its own.  At one time Sinn Fein were one of the wealthiest parties in Europe due to fundraising among Americans of Irish descent, but because of their historical baggage, other parties were still able to compete with them.  Jimmy Goldsmith poured huge amounts of his personal wealth into the Referendum Party's 1997 general election campaign but only ended up with a modest share of the vote.  But money can certainly buy a party a hearing with the public if there are no other factors holding them back.  And now that large swathes of the English public seem more neutral about Farage than they used to be, the notion that Reform could win a general election as the UK's wealthiest party no longer seems fanciful.

I maintain that a Farage premiership would be similar to the Iraq War, Brexit and Thatcherism in that it would be a phenomenally disruptive event that would fundamentally change the dynamic of Scottish politics, and could potentially lead to independence.