Nigel Farage makes shocking General Election prediction as Reform UK storms past Tories

Nigel Farage has predicted that Reform UK will win up to six million votes at the election, nearly doubling his previous record with UKIP in 2015.

He made the bold forecast at a press conference in Westminster this lunchtime, speaking in the wake of yesterday’s bombshell YouGov poll that saw Reform overtake the Tories for the first time ever.

Mr Farage told reporters: “We are not going to get four million votes, we’re not going to get five million votes, we’re going to get a very, very substantial number of votes”.

“I genuinely think we can get over six million votes. I don’t know where the ceiling is.”

The last party to win over six million votes at a Westminster election was the Liberal Democrats in 2010, after weeks of so-called “Cleggmania”.

Mr Farage also reiterated his prediction that Reform UK would win more votes than the Conservatives, but issued a stark warning that even this level of success could go unrewarded by the voting system.

He said that if Reform were to win a “huge number of votes and a paltry number of seats”, it would “tell us yet again that Britain is broken and Britain needs reform”.

He warned that such reform would have to include the electoral system - moving to a more proportional system that would make it easier for smaller parties to have a breakthrough - as well as the “abomination” of the House of Lords, and a right as in some European countries for voters to force referendums on certain issues.

Reacting to the bombshell news from the G7 in Italy, Mr Sunak denied that Reform is the real opposition to Labour, and warned that a vote for anyone other than him will hand Sir Keir a “blank cheque” to whack up taxes.

Mr Sunak hit back this morning telling journalists at the G7 summit in Puglia, Italy: “We’re only halfway halfway through this election right? So I’m still fighting very hard for every vote.

“I always say the poll that matters is the one on July 4 – but if that poll was replicated on July 4, it would be handing Labour a blank cheque to tax everyone.

“Tax their home their pension, their car, their family, and I’ll be fighting very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Pressed on whether he thinks it’s “existential” for the Tories, he added: “I think at the end of the day on July 5, one of two people's going to be Prime Minister - Keir Starmer or me - and this week the most important thing that happened was you saw both major parties manifestos that's their programme for government if they were elected”.

“So now everyone has a very clear sense of what each of us would do and as you saw from our manifesto, as we were discussing yesterday, say what you want about it, but it's a very clear plan, a detailed set of bold actions.

“That's how you deliver a more secure future for people and crucially, there's a massive difference on tax.

“We want to cut your taxes at every stage of your life in work, setting up a business, buying your first home, when you're retired, you're a pensioner or if you have a family cutting taxes for everybody.

“The Labour party consistently can't tell you which taxes they're going to put up but they are going to put them up and as we saw yesterday, they're gonna raise the tax burden to the highest level in this country's history. And that's the choice for everyone at the election.”