A new poll from YouGov has shown that voters prefer Zack Polanski to Nigel Farage. While that’s good news for Polanski, the poll also shows he has a hill to climb in terms of overtaking the other leaders:
Glimmers of hope
YouGov’s tracker shows that Starmer has mostly dipped while Badenoch has risen and Farage has held steady:
Oh, and Ed Davey is there too. Davey has overtaken Starmer, fallen behind Badenoch, and remained level with Farage – i.e. he’s also held steady.
Despite all of the above, Reform are riding high in the polls, including with YouGov:
Seat estimate | YouGov, 4-5 Jan
REF: 318 (+313)
LD: 90 (+18)
CON: 62 (-59)
GRN: 59 (+55)
SNP: 48 (+39)
LAB: 43 (-368)
PLAID: 7 (+3)
Based on @YouGov poll, 4-5 Jan pic.twitter.com/0SaUlNLlQ8
— Stats for Lefties
(@LeftieStats) January 6, 2026
Polanski may be trailing the other leaders, but this is significant progress for the Green leader who only took charge in September. The issue past Green leaders had wasn’t whether voters preferred them; it was that voters hadn’t heard of them
In their write up of the latest poll, YouGov said:
Since his election as Green leader in September, Zack Polanski has made significant breakthroughs compared to his predecessors, with more Britons now having a favourable opinion of him than Keir Starmer. But do they see him as right for the top job in British politics?
The public back Kemi Badenoch to be the better prime minister over the Green leader by 28% to 22%, and favour Ed Davey by 20% to 15%. However, the public are roughly split on the questions of Polanski versus Farage (28% to 27%) and Polanski versus Starmer (21% to 19%).
The fact that Polanski is cutting through despite an overwhelmingly hostile media environment is a positive sign. While the next four years will no doubt be a real slog, we should all remember the 2017 election. As Tracy Keeling wrote for the Canary in 2019:
Labour saw its biggest voteshare increase since 1945 in the 2017 general election. The support Corbyn’s Labour attracted, which defied early predictions, resulted in a hung parliament.
The Tories began that election with a 21 point lead. When the wider public engaged with the campaign, however they saw the difference between the Tories and Corbyn’s Labour, and they responded accordingly.
We ain’t seen nothing yet
The next UK election is scheduled for 2029. By that time, the US will have suffered through four years of Trump, and possibly more than that:
Trump is OPENLY talking about cancelling 2026 elections. This is in addition to Republican states
– purging people from the voter registries
– “use it or lose it” voter laws where if you have not voted in certain elections they purge you
– poll workers ON RECORD refusing to… pic.twitter.com/j4mCN0UPrO— g. (@GeauxGabrielle) January 10, 2026
We’re noting this because the Trump regime is increasingly authoritarian, and in ways that British citizens would not want to see imported:
We are in Nazi Germany. U.S. citizens are now being routinely kidnapped by Trump’s Nazi ICE Gestapo. pic.twitter.com/ApWzafwXVo
— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) January 11, 2026
Labour, the Tories, and Reform will all go into the 2029 election with a reputation for sucking up to Trump and the US, which will give Polanski and the Greens an opportunity to sell a new vision for the UK.
Even if there isn’t a UK backlash against that specific issue, there will be plenty of other problems to point at, and Labour, the Tories, and Reform are linked to all of them – especially as Reform is stacked to the gills with Tory rejects.
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) January 12, 2026
Featured image via Barold / Microchip08 (Wikimedia)
By Willem Moore
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