Steve Reed has said he is “not at all surprised” Reform UK is consistently beating Labour in the polls.
The environment secretary said Nigel Farage’s party poll lead is a “reflection of people’s disenchantment with politics”.
“ I am not at all surprised, because we just had 14 years where people were promised so much, and all of those promises were broken,” he told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
Mr Reed said: “Through austerity, through Brexit, after the pandemic with ‘Build Back Better’, none of it actually happened.
“The public want to see the change they actually voted for become real.”
He went on to outline Labour’s plan to leave Britain with the cleanest rivers on record by rebuilding crumbling sewage pipes and overhauling the regulation of water firms.
Reform is currently leading in the polls with 29 per cent of the vote, with Labour trailing in second place on 23 per cent.
A recent “mega poll” by YouGov put Mr Farage’s party on course to comfortably gain the most MPs in a general election, winning 271 seats compared to Labour on 178. Reform would not have a majority, but would be the largest party by far and unseat cabinet ministers Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper, Bridget Phillipson and Jonathan Reynolds.
Asked about the poll deficit and how Labour plans to turn it around, Mr Reed said: “This government is making change for this country, but it takes time for that to feed through.
“I’m proud of what we’re doing. I’m proud of this government, and the British public will see the change they voted for over the coming months and years.”
Labour’s first year in power ended disastrously, with headlines dominated by the chaotic U-turn over Sir Keir Starmer’s planned £5bn benefit cuts.
And polling guru Sir John Curtice said Sir Keir had “the worst start for any newly elected prime minister, Labour or Conservative”.
He said Labour’s landslide victory last summer had masked vulnerabilities in the party’s support and its policies.
“Labour only won 35 per cent of the vote – the lowest share ever for a majority government. Keir Starmer was never especially popular, and the public still don’t know what he stands for,” he told Times Radio.
“The only vision he’s really presented is: ‘We’ll fix the problems the Conservatives left us.’ But it’s not clear how he wants to change the country.”
