Good morning. A good rule of thumb in political reporting is that any news story about voter intention polling is wrong. That is because news stories, by definition, are what’s what new and what’s different, and polls that show anything unusual (or at least anything significantly unusual) are probably outliers. In polling, what matters is the trend (because polls are a reliable guide to voting trends) but not so much the actual numbers (where polling is much more hit and miss).

So it it is with some reservation that we start with YouGov polling, for the Times and Sky News, showing Reform UK in first place, and ahead of Labour for the first time in a national opinion poll. It has Reform UK on 25%, Labour on 24% and the Conservatives on 21%. As Anthony Wells, head of European political and social research at YouGov, told the Times, the Reform UK lead is well within the margin of error, and it would be more realistic to see Nigel Farage’s party level pegging with Labour. Wells said:.

We’ve had Labour and Reform extremely close over all our polls so far this year and this survey shows a narrow Reform lead,” he said. “While it remains within the margins of error it reinforces the fact that Reform is roughly equal in support with Labour with Conservative slipping back again. So why cover it prominently? Because, while the figures may not matter much, the trend does, and this is confirmation that support for Reform UK has been growing significantly since the general election. Here is a poll tracker from Electoral Calculus.

This does not mean Farage is in poll position to be the next PM. The next election is years away, Reform only has five MPs and its surge is miniscule compared to the SDP’s in the early 1980s. The SDP-Liberal Alliance hit 50% in the polls at one point, but it got crushed by first-past-the-post at the 1983 general election and ended up with just 23 MPs. But politics has changed a lot in the last 40 years, and even if Reform’s prospects of overtaking the two main UK parties still look slim, these figures will alarm MPs from both the Conservatives and Labour.

Here is the agenda for the day. 9.40am: Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, gives a speech at the UK-EU forum’s annual conference. 10am: The Today presenter Nick Robinson interviews Wes Streeting, the health secretary, for a world cancer day event. 10am: Education experts, including the National Education Union, give evidence to the Commons education committee about the children’s wellbeing and schools bill.

11am: Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, gives a speech on how Stormont has been operating. 11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing. 11.30am: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes questions in the Commons. 2.30pm: Sir Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee. 2.30pm: Gareth Davies, head of the National Audit Office, gives his annual speech to parliament.

And in the evening Keir Starmer is having dinner in Downing Street with the Danish prime minister, Mette Fredriksen. If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.