Reform’s big breakthrough looks all too real, as Labour will soon find out

It looks like the polling industry as a whole has called the result fairly close. We will see where the final seat and vote shares come in, but it looks like a good night for pollsters as well as a historic night for Labour and a breakthrough for Reform UK.

Incredibly, we have not one but two of the most dramatic stories in recent electoral history – Labour’s landslide and Reform’s surge to what looks like double digit seats. This time last year Farage’s party was languishing in low single digits, and it now looks as if they will easily surpass Ukip’s high watermark in 2015.

We have yet to see exactly where these Reform seats are, but if they have taken constituencies in Labour areas as well as Conservative then this is also a wake-up call for Labour and shows what a force Farage will be in the next parliament.

It also appears that both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak have been somewhat bailed out by results in Scotland as they have collectively routed the SNP. Those 10 or so extra seats have spared a few Labour blushes. Had Labour dropped below 400 seats in this exit poll, it would in some ways have been seen as a disappointment.

This exit poll sets the scene for a Labour term that could become cross-pressured from Reform on the one side and the Green Party on the other: both channeling the anti-politics mood that has become such a feature of this election campaign. The scale of the victory will carry Starmer a long way, but the threats to his broad and fragile coalition will be there.

For the Conservatives, this is a bittersweet moment. On the one hand, they have avoided the worst – a wipeout that called their existence into question – but on the other hand have lost around 200 colleagues. The party lives to fight another day, but now faces Nigel Farage in parliament in a continuation of this painful campaign that has so divided the right of British Politics.