Polling

The only thing we have is to vote for parties who behave with more integrity. There is a lot of media pointing to Labours wrongs, but they are small dice compared to what has become the Tory party. 
We need to tell the Conservatives that behaving like a dodgy business is not acceptable in a government. Hopefully if they get a big enough thrashing this time they will attempt to clean up their act in time for the next election. 

IMO they are similar to the worst parties in eastern Europe, constantly with their hands in the till while distracting by inflating minor issues such as What's a woman, Hate crime etc. 

Young people tend to be idealistic. What age group are to talking of? 

I wonder how many older pensioners will really vote reform when it comes to the ballot. Old people find change very hard and I suspect many will protest that they will vote reform but return to type at the ballot box.

I also think that having lost the position of alternative party to the Greens etc, I don't see the Lib dems as official opposition at all. 

Agreed. There are a lot of Reform blue rinses that will return to the Tories prior to the GE, and also we have the "shy Tory" factor regardless. Will almost certainly put the Tories in second place, but the fact that it's even under consideration is wild.

Link shows fine Andrew.

I am broadly Blairite Centre/Left - could at the moment vote Lib or Lab or even Green.

My instinct is that the Tories will do better than the polls say although can’t see anything but a comfortable Labour win. Not sure though if that instinct is based on a genuine consideration of the current political landscape or just the experience of the past and a long run of political disappointments. Perhaps a complete meltdown is possible?. It must though be quite hard to vote Tory at the moment when they are so clearly split , when it is not really clear what Sunak stands for and when there is every chance if they did somehow recover and win that the Tory Right would look to replace him with one of their own. It’s not impossible they could completely implode.

Labour I have to say are uninspiring. They will face huge challenges if they win. They will have to throw off their current extreme caution if they wish to achieve anything in power.

I suspect Reform will fall back to around 8% in the election and get no seats. I don’t think they are more than a protest votes for largely elderly and largely northern voters.

Lib Dem’s are simply “Not the Tories” .

Perhaps surprisingly I see little evidence of the clear unofficial Lib Lab pact that we see in by-elections - where one tacitly stands back in favour of the other. I wonder if the Tories will hang on to a few 40-30-30 seats that could have been won if Lab and Lib worked better together.

With Labour likely to be no more than OK and possibly fail and the press in full “UKIP” mode , it does feel like there might be an opportunity for the Populists in 2029 - whether they win the post election Tory civil war or try to do it through Reform. They are generally a pretty unappealing bunch though and have many giant egos. They will need to find a better leader than Farage, Braverman, Patel, Johnson or Tice.

I think that graph probably looks about right to me. Although after about 2-3 weeks of a new Parliament, I'm not convinced that it yet shows anything worthwhile. It would increase the number of Labour and Reform MPs at the expense of the Tories.

Obviously over the summer recess there's very little politics going on. I wouldn't read too much into it at the minute. Whether Reform stick about will be an interesting question, but I think that the outcome there is more dependant on the Tories than Reform themselves.