Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has slid into third place in the opinion polls in its lowest performance in the last 18 months.
The dip comes after Mr Farage’s by-election win in Clacton in August failed to boost morale amid increased scrutiny over his finances.
In a new voting intention poll from More in Common on 1 September, the right-wing party has landed on 22 per cent, four points behind Labour and one point behind the Tories.
Mr Farage returned to Parliament on Tuesday, but infighting remains within his party after a turbulent summer.
Other major parties declined to run against him in his constituency’s by-election, meaning his main rival was the self-styled “intergalactic space warrior” Count Binface.
He now faces a parliamentary investigation into a £5 million gift he received from the crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne before he was first elected to the Commons in 2024.
Mr Farage, who has said the gift was not political and insisted he has done nothing wrong, previously described August’s poll as a “people versus the establishment by-election”.
He said it was “a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment to frankly tell them where to go”.
Luke Tryl, the director of More in Common, said: “Obviously these are margin of error changes, and we should expect things to fluctuate over conference season.
“But this is the highest Conservative vote share since January of this year, and Reform’s lowest in 18 months (though we have only been prompting Restore for two weeks which will affect this).
In terms of individual leaders, he said: “Burnham retains high approval ratings on +13. Kemi Badenoch is up one to positive territory at +1, Ed Davey is up three to -5, Lowe is down three to -12 (again with high unknowns), Farage is down four to -27, and Polanski is down one to -28.”
In recent weeks, Reform has been plagued with row rumours, after key ally Tom Montgomerie was suspended for publicly criticising home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf.
On a podcast with the Spectator, he said Mr Yusuf needed to become a team player and should not act “like a child” in politics.
The party is also facing mounting questions over Mr Harborne’s donation. If the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Daniel Greenberg, believes Mr Farage has broken the rules, he will refer the case to the Commons Standards Committee.
If the panel decides to suspend him for at least 10 sitting days, a recall petition will be held, which will lead to a further by-election if 10 per cent of eligible voters in Clacton sign it.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies