Apocalyptic poll suggests just 98 Tories would survive election... with even Sunak and Hunt at risk
CHANGING Prime Minister makes no sense, a former Tory leader insisted yesterday after dire polling predicted a general election wipeout.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith spoke out after a seat-by-seat breakdown revealed even PM Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s electoral futures are on the line.
The shock poll suggested a Tory horror show at the ballot box with the Conservatives winning just 98 seats in England.
Sir Iain acknowledged the public was angry with the Government after a costof-living squeeze fuelled by Covid and high migration levels.
But he urged Conservatives to stop turning in on themselves and focus on putting more money in people’s pockets.
A 15,000-person poll by Survation between March 8 and 22 was used to create the breakdown of constituencies, which indicated the Conservatives would be annihilated Scotland and Wales.
The survey put Labour on 45% with a 19-point lead over the Tories on 26%, suggesting Sir Keir Starmer’s party could be on course for a landslide with 468 seats.
Based on the 2019 general election results, Mr Sunak’s new Richmond and Northallerton seat should be solidly Conservative.
But the poll reveals he has just a 2.4% lead over Labour.
Meanwhile, Mr Hunt has a wafer-thin 1% margin over the Liberal Democrats in his new Godalming and Ash seat. The study, carried out for the anti-Brexit Best for Britain campaign group, also suggested several Cabinet ministers, including potential leadership contenders, could be ousted as the Tories face their worst ever result. House of Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt, Home Secretary James Cleverly and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps would also lose their seats, according to the research. Sir Iain, who led his party from 2001 to 2003, said: “This is all about a real anger with the Government. I can fully understand that. “There are things the Government has got to get straight. Bring inflation down, interest rates down, taxation down. Get [Rwanda] flights off the ground.”
And he added: “Getting pressure off people’s backs financially is absolutely critical. We have a few months to make sure people are better off.
“The general view of the public is we have no strength.We are turning in on ourselves and we’re not interested in what they do. The most important thing is to deliver.”
But Sir Iain said of a leadership change: “The idea that we turn in on ourselves and start discussing how we can change this by changing the individual who, by the way, will have next-to-little time to be able to establish themselves in the mind of the public. Yeah. Might make a small difference in the short term. But the reality is internal wranglings and arguments, which are never comfortable for a party and, just before an election, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.” The poll also highlighted the threat to the Tories from Reform UK.
It suggests Richard Tice’s party will come second in seven seats and achieve an overall vote share of 8.5% – just behind the Liberal Democrats on 10.4%.
However, if Reform did not stand, the Tories would win 150 seats, a model of the situation revealed.
The survey said the Scottish National Party would hold 41 seats, despite falling popularity after a series of scandals.
In 2019, the Conservatives had 365
seats, Labour 203, the SNP 48, the Lib Dems 11 and Plaid Cymru four.
Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho, an ally of Mr Sunak, said “we are fighting to win” and her party must “keep going”.
But former Cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke, a prominent critic of the Prime Minister, claimed the Tories were “sleepwalking to a historic disaster”.
He said: “The British people’s judgment on the current direction of travel is clear.
“Failing to listen and change course will have devastating consequences for our party and country.
“I believe MPs owe it both to the Conservative Party and to the country we love to try.”
Ex-Brexit Secretary Lord Frost said: “The Tory party needs to face up to the reality that its current policies have alienated huge numbers of our voters.
“Only a shift to properly Conservative policies, to deliver the change in the way the country is run that people voted for with Brexit, can alter that.”
Approached
Tory MP Bob Seely revealed he had been approached to defect to the Nigel Faragelinked Reform party but said he rebuffed the advances because he believed in loyalty. Mr Seely added: “I don’t cut and run – and neither should we.”
The poll said Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch would retain her seat, along with former Home Secretary Suella Braverman and ex-immigration minister Robert Jenrick. Naomi Smith, Best for Britain chief executive, said: “With polling showing swathes of voters turning their backs on the Tories, it’s clear this will be a change election.”
BRITAIN is on course to become a one-party state. The Tories now face a landslide defeat on a scale never seen before in the history of our democracy. Their dire prospects were spelt out in a new poll which, if replicated at the general election, would give them just 98 seats, compared with Labour’s 468.
Not a single Tory MP would be returned in Scotland and Wales, while even supposedly safe seats, like Rishi Sunak’s in Yorkshire, would be at risk.
As his party sinks in popularity, the pressure on his leadership intensifies. The calls for his departure could swell dramatically in volume after next month’s local elections, which are expected to be a massacre for the Conservatives. Indeed, a study by the psephologist Colin Rallings of Plymouth University predicts that they will lose half of their councillors.
Such a disastrous result could be the cue for a full parliamentary rebellion against the Prime Minister. Already it is estimated that around 25 MPs have submitted letters of no confidence in him to the backbench 1922 Committee and it will only take 53 in total to trigger yet another leadership contest. In a new twist to the unfolding turbulent saga, Sunak’s team has inti- mated that he will thwart any attempt to hold a ballot by calling an early general election.
THIS sort of manoeuvring would only add to the atmosphere of farcical strife that has engulfed the party. To his critics, that shows exactly why he should quit, for as long as he remains in charge, the cause of Conservatism is doomed. In this narrative he is painted as an indecisive control freak who is unable to inspire, acts too much like a technocrat, neglects his core supporters and leads a zombie government without sense of purpose. “Downing Street is a black hole. It is where policies go to die,” complains one minister.
Yet the claim the Tories could suddenly be revived by a change of leadership is the worst kind of wishful thinking. The idea belongs to the realm of fantasy politics, not the real world. For a start, a fourth contest in five years would invite the ridicule of the electorate by showing that Tory MPs, in their addiction to melodrama, have lost all judgment.
Their obsession with leadership battles looks increasingly frivolous and self-indulgent, as if they regard the premiership as their political plaything rather than one of the pillars of our democracy. Remarkably, not since David Cameron won the 2010 general election has a new prime minister reached No10 by a public vote.
In any case, it is deluded to heap all the blame for dismal ratings on the Prime Minister, who has been in post for less than two years. The Tories’ woes go back much further and are rooted in the failure to implement essential pledges like reducing mass immigration and cutting taxation.
What has fuelled the disillusion among voters is not the personalities but the policy disasters that have undermined living standards, left crimes unpunished, made our borders insecure and plunged our public services into crisis.
A new leader will do nothing to alter that reality. Nor is there any Churchillian or Thatcherite figure ready to take over. The contenders are not an impressive bunch. Penny Mordaunt, the favourite, has neither convictions nor a record of achievement, while Kemi Badenoch lacks authority and experience.
SIMILARLY, Grant Shapps and James Cleverly do not come across as heavyweights. For all her forthrightness, Suella Braverman has an even greater gift for alienating voters.
Rishi Sunak is a bigger figure than any of them, having reached the top through his formidable talents, including his astonishing grasp of policy, his ferocious work ethic and his unrivalled articulacy.
No one objectively watching him at the Commons Liaison Committee last week could fail to be impressed by his eloquent command of detail. His skills have often been put to good use in his premiership, notably working with his Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in rebuilding the economy after the catastrophe of Liz Truss’s brief tenure.
He was also the architect of the Windsor Framework that settled the Brexit trade dispute in Northern Ireland. Just as importantly, it was his rejection of the Scottish Nationalists’ transgender legislation that ultimately brought down Nichola Sturgeon and thereby strengthened the Union.
Sunak is said to be “tetchy” but is it any wonder, given how his party’s devotion to internal strife. The Tories’ cause might look hopeless now, but it would be better to go down with dignity and discipline than as a discordant rabble.
‘Sunak is a bigger figure than any of the other contenders’