Reform UK Chairman Lee Anderson has said he is not worried about the polls showing Reform’s lead slipping, adding that Andy Burnham has not faced proper scrutiny yet.
Speaking on GB News he said: “You lot in the media are getting carried away with this. I mean, for the past 350 polls, we’ve been the top. We’ve consistently been the top.
“We had a real stormer in the May elections. We won, I think it was 1,450 seats. We had a great May the year before. We’re looking forward to next May. We had a great time in Scotland, a great time in Wales. We’ve done really, really well over the past year or so.
“And two polls come out that aren’t favourable and you lot in the media are jumping all over it.
“But I will say this: there has been a bit of a bounce. It’s not all down to Andy Burnham. I think a lot of this bounce is the fact that Keir Starmer has eventually gone. That’s enough to make anybody breathe a sigh of relief.
“And when you look at what Starmer actually brought in when he first became PM, one of his first major policies was to scrap the winter fuel payment, and I think that was the beginning of the end for Sir Keir Starmer.
“But I think Burnham has gone one further. We’re hearing about this death tax now. He’s not attacking the living; he’s attacking the dead. So we’ll see how it pans out. There’s a long way to go.
“Over the coming months he will get some proper scrutiny in the media and in Parliament in the Commons. He’s had no scrutiny here and that bounce, I predict, will shrink away.
“People went to Labour in vast numbers, not as much as under Jeremy Corbyn but the last election Labour won on a landslide. A lot of those Labour voters have voted Reform, we know that, in local elections and mayoral elections.
“And people are quite nimble in the way they vote these days, and rightly so. You should pick the party that you think best suits your needs.
“At the moment Burnham’s saying a lot of the right things and making the right noises, but he’s had no real scrutiny yet. And the problem Burnham’s got, he could have all these great policies in his mind to do stuff, but he’s still got 400 backbenchers to please, and he won’t please them just as Starmer did.
“Eventually, the blades will come out, and they’ll sink it straight between his shoulder blades.
“We said when we first got elected in 2024, we said, ‘Watch out! They’re going to come for us’, and they are coming for us. They’re coming for us in vast numbers. Parts of the gutter press, they’re coming for us, and some of the journalists are coming for us.
“We’re not bothered. We can take it on the chin. We know what’s happening out there in the real world. When I go to Clacton and campaign for Nigel, as I have done many times so far, and I will do in the coming days, the word on the street is completely different.
“The people in Clacton will decide who’s going to be their member of parliament. People in Skegness and Boston will decide. The people in Ashfield will decide who their MP is going to be at the next election, and let the public decide, not you lot.”
Discussing the post shared by Zack Polanski, he said: “He’s not here to defend himself, but the man’s an idiot. He’s got form on this. I mean, this is a party that’s supposed to promote diversity and kindness and love and inclusivity. I saw the picture of this, I don’t know what it was, this person.
“He’s got the rainbow hat on, promoting all sorts of diversity and inclusivity and then the picture of a guillotine saying, ‘We’ve got plans for Nigel.’
“These creatures – they’ve got no place in politics. I don’t like to report people to the police for making stupid comments and sharing stuff but the bar’s been set on this.
“We saw that with Lucy Connolly. She made an awful tweet. She apologised later, but she went to prison for that. So that’s where the bar is at the moment.”