“People Know The Country Is Broken!” Reform UK Ahead Of Tories Among Male Voters

A new poll has highlighted the growing unpopularity of the Conservative Party among voters.

The latest figures suggest more male voters are backing Reform UK ahead of the Tories, particularly in red wall seats.

TalkTV’s Peter Cardwell discusses the story with deputy leader of Reform Ben Habib, co-founder of Deltapoll Joe Twyman and commentator Candice Holdsworth.

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A new poll has again highlighted the growing unpopularity of the Tories amongst voter with the latest figures uh suggesting that reform UK is ahead of the conservatives among male voters not least in red wall seats while joining me now as the deputy leader of that party reform UK benhabib thanks for being in

The studio as is the pollster and co-founder of Delta Pool Joe tman Candace holsworth is with us as well let me ask Candice first actually before I chat to uh the others I mean this is clearly very very wearing for the conservative party they are into the

Teens in these figures I find it so interesting I mean I’ve sort of been very circumspect about the whole thing because I remember with ukip years ago you know when you had all these conservative MPS defecting to them and everyone was like oh the conservatives

Are over and then it kind of fizzled out but maybe what we’re seeing now is if you’re seeing a collapse an actual collapse in the conservative vote in certain constituencies then maybe that could mean that reform could actually do something in our first pass the post system very difficult Ben uh reform UK

Has uh you have one MP of course Lee Anderson but you’ve always in the last few years that you’ve been in existence struggled in some uh in some elections anyway to get H success in that first pass the post system but you must be delighted with these figures I am

Utterly delighted and they’re right the figures are right and the people are beginning to see the conservative party for what it is which is not conservative and candies makes an interesting point you know in 2015 when um uh you K got 4 million votes across the country but didn’t get

A single seat it looked like first pass the post was going to be a problem for an Insurgent party but I think two or three things have changed since then the first is that people have recognized that the conservative party actually isn’t small C conservative big tick in

The box there second thing is the economy and the way people feel about themselves the state of the country the Public Services our cultural setup and everything else is all in the spotlight at the moment after 14 years of conservative government people know that the country is broken whereas in 2015

The conservatives were relatively popular and so the four million votes ukip got was in spite of the fact Al if you actually look at some of the statistics in this ban it’s interesting isn’t it because I I I take nothing away from the fact that reform is doing well

That is a fact but at the same time if you look at the relative stages within the Electoral cycle we’ll go into this with Joe tman in a second in 2014 ukip uh predecessor to your party although UK still exists uh won the European election with 26.6% vote share in 2019

Uh the brexit party um of which reform UK emerged uh came with 30.5% so perhaps being on 16 177% actually isn’t where you want to be at this stage in the Electoral cycle well well obviously you wanted to be higher anyway what I’m saying is shouldn’t it

Be higher well in October LA but let’s just go back you know we’re three years old the party we were polling it 1% 3 years ago in October 2023 we were polling at 5% earlier this year we were polling at 10% when I got my 133% vote count in the Welling bro byelection

We’re now polling at 15% the Tories are down to 18 or 19 where in a SMI where within a smidgen of overtaking the conservative party this is a very febr political environment completely different to any environment I’ve known in my life I take the point you make

About the European elections in 2014 and 2019 but people didn’t take the European elections as seriously as they take the general election or or or any any B but in the last vote for a parliamentary seat Rochdale I mean you did really badly there yeah Rochdale was a really

Weird byelection you know you didn’t have a labor candidate because he was cancelled at the beginning the whole Gaza Israeli thing seemed to loom bigger than any domestic issues and um there was a lot of hate and vitri all and it was it was definitely a very strange set

Of circumstances Joe tman from Delta pole tell us what you think think of these statistics how widespread is this and how many MPS on this do you think that reform UK could actually have after the next election or is it none uh well uh there’s no doubt that reform UK have

Been the success story in the polls over the uh over the last few uh few months certainly since October that’s definitely true they’ve improved their position and it won’t help come the general election because I don’t think you’ll win any seats and that is not to do with with the performance compared to

The conservatives has to do with the performance compared to labor because you talk talk about performance in the red wool seats doing better in the among some constituencies against the conservatives and that that may indeed be true at this stage in the cycle but you have to

Contend with the fact that firstly we would expect some reform UK voters probably around about a third to go back to the conservatives come the election but more pressing is the fact that labor in the red wall are considerably ahead well the only the only counter I’d make

To that is these polls don’t measure those people who declare themselves not to be voting at the moment and I think as people recognize who reform are what we stand for the fact we really do uh believe in small C conservatism low tax uh deregulation smaller government proud

Of the United Kingdom strong borders does that happen that undecided voters go along those lines I think they’re not coming out for the Tories let me tell you that no and that it I would agree that that may be true but the idea they’re going to switch to reform is

Simply not backed up by the data at the moment or indeed by historical president and I think particularly the difficult difficulty that reform will have come an election is that you have to find 600 perhaps 630 candidates and a depth a squad depth to use the to use the

Football metaphor uh is extremely difficult to establish in such a short period of time I think if you don’t mind me saying so you’re hijacked by your view of Precedence because what I’m saying is that the political environment now is more febrile than I’ve ever known

It in my lifetime more Fe rather than during the uh during the referendum for brexit well that was a referendum it wasn’t a general election no you said the you said the political situation and I’m saying it was as and we voted for brexit against all the presidents against all the establishment nonsense

Rhetoric and everything else all the scare Stories the people came out and they said they wanted brexit and we are back in a position where the people want the United Kingdom to be put first and foremost and they recognize the only party that will do it is reform UK labor

Hasn’t got a policy all that labor says is they won’t do anything particularly nasty otherwise they’ll stick with the Tory agenda and the Tories are completely out of ideas and they’re imploding we haven’t seen this before in the UK tell us how significant it is that men are backing reform certainly we

See that 19% especially in some red wall seats uh according to this polling uh do those demographic groups really matter Joe or not really because of course everybody’s vote is worth as much as any no matter what their sex they they definitely matter and it’s no rise

Really based on the kind of historical situation that we’ve seen whether it’s support for ukip whether it’s support for the brexit party or whether it’s support for reform it tends to be higher among men men are more likely to support such groups uh workingclass men are more

Likely to support such groups people in some red War constituencies are more likely to support such groups and indeed people who voted people who voted leave are more likely to support such groups but that doesn’t mean that there are enough of those people in in such areas

To bring about the kind of numbers that would be needed to overtake labor which is what you well yes of course we will and we have seen in the past you’re hijacked by precedent well don’t let history always be the judge of the future we have to adjust is it possible

That you’re presenting a positive view from a strategic perspective no not at all look at where we were in the polls in October 2023 5% we’re now at 15 we’ve trebled our position in 6 months well so another so in another six months you’ll treble it again well I’m not saying

We’re going to treble it again but we are on the March the political wind is in our sailes and the Tory ship is floundering it’s hit the Rocks it’s sinking we haven’t had this situation the Tories you need to beat in the red wall we labor need to be what we need to

Do is get the small CA conservative vote out I want to talk about I want to talk about hijacking because we heard another story today of course that that China has been hijacking our electoral data we know that 40 million people’s information has been uh has been

Accessed by China we were not given the full story now we have the full story there’s going to be a statement by the Deputy Prime Minister later today how worried are you by the threat from China ban Habib well I the whole Global position is extremely difficult at the

Moment you know we have um a resurgent Russia in Ukraine we had Russia pinned down or Ukraine had Russia pined down in the southeastern region they were going to break through and repel Russia that didn’t happen Russia is now spending eight times as much on military hardware

Than it did three years ago the West seems to be half asleep at the wheel NATO isn’t spending the NATO members aren’t spending anywhere near as much as they should with the exception of the US on armaments China is naturally being pushed into a corner with Russia that’s

The alliance that’s forming China Russia and India to a great or lesser extent and then we’ve obviously got all the proxy wars that are taking place in the Middle East you know which is Saudi versus in my view the whole Gaza Israel thing is really a Saudi versus Iranian

Um geopolitical battle and um so we’ve got instability everywhere and one of the things without wishing to go back to Party politics that reform is very strong on is defense spending and we’ve been a complet but part of that as well is not just about Hardware military hardware about misinformation

Disinformation and so on and we’ve seen some of that apparently coming from China and Russia even over the weekend on uh the Princess of Wales uh Joe tman and I wonder in terms of disinformation and misinformation is there polling to show how much that influences people in

Their in their voting and so on I mean do we know how influential these foreign actors can be it’s the kind of thing that’s extraordinarily difficult to difficult to test in a in a survey instrument that’s kind of the point isn’t it yeah uh and there is an important distinction between

Disinformation which is deliberately incorrect information that is put out and misinformation which is information that is wrong but people believe to be true that is that is circul so they’re sort of doing it in good faith essentially exactly and and one indeed an action by one actor in disinformation

Can lead to misinformation from others so so it’s a very complicated complicated picture but I’m sure that in the UK general election whenever it may be this year but also crucially in the US election in November this year we will see an enormous amount of attempted

Activity by uh by those both within the country and outside the country uh the question is how much impact any of it will make and we just don’t know at the moment Candace what do you want to hear from Oliver dyen later today I I think we’re really going to have to start

Thinking about this now I think the Warfare of the future is going to look very much like active disinformation then Downstream from that you think have the have the attempts to deal with this just not been strong enough well I think yes I mean I think the social media

Companies in particular Facebook really struggle to get to grips with it at first and it’s something that you know very liberal libertarian minded people do struggle with you know Bad actors and then you know we started seeing in in 2016 we started seeing the influence of

Bad actors in The in our elections so I think it is something we do have to take very very seriously and going forward we’re going to have to really think about how we deal with attacks on our digital infrastructure deception fakery um our individuals individual your

People going to have to start becoming a lot more literate and we’re only just waking we’re only just waking up to these risks you remember three years ago Boris Johnson wanted to put haawi through our 5G Network you know the UK as ever has been incredibly slow to wake

Up to these risks Donald Trump was calling out China years before anyone else was and you know the the sort of established liberal intellectual Elite all roll their eyes at Trump thinking he was just a warmonger but he was absolutely right about China and we should have been taking preventative

Steps years ago as we should have done with Russia and our dependence on it on on Russian fuel do you worry just briefly ban about the proximity of the American election to ours there’s been thoughts from five eyes the security Alliance around this that we should actually split them apart because of

Misinformation and disinformation in two of the leading Western Nations G7 countries yeah I mean they will interfere but I think Joe makes a very good point whatever these people do actually they can’t go into the into the ballot boxes and place votes and uh I I don’t feel that no not withstanding

Their interference in the past that actually they’ve had any material impact one way or the other voting intention we’ll continue to debate that thank you very much indeed to benhabib of Reform UK Joe tman of Delta poing