Support for Nigel Farage’s Reform party among 18-24s has fallen to just 7% in the most recent YouGov voting intention survey. Compare that to 4 August where 21% of young people told YouGov they would vote for the far right party. That’s a drop of 66% in under two weeks.

Farage collapse could benefit Corbyn

It seems more of the youth are wising up to Farage, who has been branded a “con artist”. The fall in support for Farage could benefit Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new left party, which has already reached 750,000 sign ups. Among 18-24 year olds, Corbyn has an approval rating of +18, while Keir Starmer has one of -30.

When it comes to the issues, young people see the economy as by far the most important. As of July 2025, they also view housing and health as more important than immigration, in a blow to Farage.

Farage vs Corbyn: issues that matter to young people

Farage’s policies on the economy are to rig it even further in favour of the already rich. In the 2024 election, he pledged to raise the inheritance tax threshold to estates worth £2m or over. This would mean millionaires can hand over their wealth tax free to people who haven’t earned it, instead of it funding public programmes to help working people.

Corbyn and Sultana’s new party will have members decide its policies at the founding conference. But public ownership of essentials is a uniting policy among its supporters, which would bring down costs for every person and business in the country. This is an economic strategy that would have huge benefits.

Further, Reform is unlikely to do anything about the housing crisis. Reform’s Treasurer is billionaire property developer Nick Candy. This is a man who has made a fortune off the artificially and financially inflated housing market. Reform MP Richard Tice is also heavily invested in property and the commercialisation of the housing essential. Whereas, Corbyn has said the very first thing he would’ve done as prime minister is end homelessness.

Flush out the issues

When it comes to health, in January, Farage told LBC that he was “open to anything” when it comes to an insurance based model of healthcare. This follows his previous comments at a UKIP (his former party) meeting in East Sussex, where he said:

I think we’re going to have to think about healthcare very, very differently. I think we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare. Frankly, I would feel more comfortable that my money would return value if I was able to do that through the market place of an insurance company than just us trustingly giving £100bn a year to central government and expecting them to organise the healthcare service from cradle to grave for us.

Meanwhile, Corbyn and Sultana are fully committed to an 100% public NHS through ending outsourcing.

Once these issues are flushed out, the new left party may find tonnes of young people joining them.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

This post was originally published on Canary.