The rise of Reform UK has shifted British politics (Image: Getty)
Prof Sir John said: “The first thing about the 2024 election is that the big parties could no longer assume that the contest is simply between them.
“It’s perfectly obvious, in the case of the Conservative example, that while yes, they need to get back around the one in eight people who switched to Labour from them, they also need to get back the roughly one in four who switched to Reform.
“All parties now are going to have realise that 2024 may be the election in which the two-party system effectively died a death.”
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And Prof Sir John told Times Radio the lack of name recognition of the four remaining Tory leadership hopefuls may make it harder for the party to rebuild.
He added: “The party is being asked to choose between four candidates and none of whom is particularly well known by the wider public, indeed not even particularly well known by the diminishing number of people who actually voted Conservative in July.”
Highlighting the challenge that the face, leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch said the must be able to “face down” Mr Farage and Labour.
She said: “We are going to get , we’re going to get Rachel Reeves and we’re going to get and to do that we need someone who’s going to cut through, somebody who is going to stand up to them and also face down Farage.
“Somebody who will resonate with the public. James thinks he’s the best – dream on, James. If you want change, vote for renewal, vote for Kemi.”
Prof Sir John also warned that Sir is not a “popular” politician, as Labour faces widespread fury and ridicule over the freebies scandal, the scrapping of the winter fuel payments and criminals being released from prison early.
He said: ” has never been a popular politician.
“He wasn’t popular in the run up to the election. He got a bit of a boost having won the election, his ratings went up, surprise, surprise, but they’ve gone down pretty quickly… This is simply the re-emergence of a problem that was firstly clear.”What are the problems? Well I would pick out two. One is that he is not very good at setting a narrative, frankly he shares that weakness with . And the question is whether any of the four candidates for this party can come with a narrative.”The second is that his political antennae are weak. He’s not very good at spotting problems before they hit him. We saw that when he admitted Natalie Elphicke to the parliamentary Labour party, the former Conservative MP for Dover and Deal.”And immediately the question that was always going to be asked was ‘what about Diane Abbott?’ and it took them a long time to realise they needed to deal with Diane Abbott’s suspension.”
’s personal ratings dropped further during his first Labour conference as prime minister, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
The Prime Minister’s popularity rating fell to -30 – down from – 26 before Labour’s party conference.
This shows that Sir Keir alienated more people at a time when party officials would hope for a boost in his ratings.