High-profile MPs in Kent would lose their seats to Reform UK if local election trends were replicated in a national poll, new analysis suggests.
Polling firm Electoral Calculus (EC) used the results on May 1 in English county council divisions to extrapolate a likely outcome in Westminster seats.
Two to fall to Reform UK would be Conservative Faversham and Mid-Kent’s Helen Whately, who has been a junior minister of state, and Dover and Deal Labour new boy Mike Tapp, who has been tipped for bigger things.
Kent was typical of the catastrophic losses suffered by the Conservatives in the county elections when they were decimated from more than 60 seats at County Hall in 2021 to just five. Reform swept all aside to take 57 places of 81 at County Hall.
EC, with the Daily Telegraph, drilled into the results division-by-division across 145 parliamentary constituencies where a vote was held.
Based on the voting patterns, Labour would have lost all but three of its 78 MPs and the Conservatives dropping from 41 to 25.
But Reform UK would soar from two members to 81.
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice MP told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Our results in the local elections were astonishing. Coming from a standing start in Kent we reduced the Conservatives to a rump, despite them running the county council for almost three decades.
“This new analysis shows that no-one is safe from Reform’s rise. From senior Tory figures like Helen Whately to Labour MPs like Mike Tapp, Kent voters have had enough of the tired two-party system.”
Another casualty would be the former Kent Labour MP turned independent, Rosie Duffield, who has remained popular with her outspoken views and uncompromising stance on issues.
EC predicted weeks before May 1 that Reform UK would secure a working majority of 41 at KCC, a forecast few believed possible from a near-zero base.
Martin Baxter, founder of EC, said Reform UK has, on current form, a “credible claim t be replacing both major parties at the moment.
He told the Telegraph: “It remains to be seen whether this is a passing protest vote or whether Reform is in it for the longer term.
“Labour won 78 of these 145 seats less than a year ago at the general election. If anything like this predicted result were to happen at a general election, it would show tectonic plate movement in British politics.”
An updated general election seat-by-seat prediction published at the beginning of May before the EC/Telegraph study and the election results were known showed even more bad news for Labour in Kent.
Reform UK would take 14 of the 18 parliamentary seats in Kent.
Labour would lose every one of the 10 Westminster members it holds to Reform UK and the Tories would be reduced to two. Rosie Duffield survives in Canterbury in this analysis. Overall, Reform would secure 245 seats, Labour 177 and the Conservatives 94.
As well as Mrs Whately, Helen Grant (Maidstone & Malling), veteran Tory Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay & Sandwich) and the highly-rated new MP Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) would all lose their seats.
In the 2019 landslide Tory victory under PM Boris Johnson, all but one of Kent’s seats at Westminster were Conservative.
In EC’s projections, only Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) and Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) are likely to be re-elected.
Kent Conservative campaign manager and recently re-elected KCC member Andrew Kennedy said: “We as a party are at a crossroads. We either become completely irrelevant or we can come back. I think the jury is out.
“A good bloc of Conservative voters are staying at home or voting Reform to teach the Tories a lesson or expressing anger at the Conservative Party which not presenting Conservative values.”
