The smoke is still bellowing out from the barrel of the starting gun. Yet Nigel Farage, the guy who practically wrapped himself in Union Jacks whilst masterfully getting the most successful political party in UK history to bend to his will whilst they were in government, despite never holding elected office in this country himself (was an MEP), has decided that this election is so in the bag for Labour that his time would be better spent helping his mate Trump in America. You know, the election that isn't being held in a few weeks time. In a country that he is not a citizen of. What a patriot. It's like when James Dyson campaigned for Brexit then sodded off out the country in the end anyway.
The most extreme end projection, from the poll that is at the most extreme end of all of them (YouGov) can't be used in isolation to draw conclusions. Not a single vote has been cast yet. The Tories are banking on dissolutionened voters staying at home thinking the election is a done deal so no point voting. Reform are relying on it to make their move. It's the excuse they're using anyway, and Tories are already painting them as Labour enablers. People staying at home thinking there's no point as it's a done deal, scaring people away from voting Reform, the left vote moving towards smaller parties, shy Tories coming out from under their rocks, and the large amount of "don't knows" sounds like it could all amalgamate to cost Labour dearly.
On Reform, I would imagine the short notice of this election was strategically engineered to also include seeing off Reform. The Conservatives and Labour will have no problem selecting candidates in time as they are large entities with cash. Reform is small and disorganised. Richard Tice originally claimed he was going to stand a candidate in every mainland GB seat. He's now downgrading this slightly, but I'd be surprised if he could achieve that. That's a lot of deposits, some of which he could loose, and there's also the issue of the vetting problem. Reform, like UKIP before them, attract some rather colour characters. I can't see that they'll have the resources or time to vet and the 620 candidates that Tice is claiming he can stand. I'd be surprised if he ended up standing many more than half of that. I think he'll end up targeting seats.