Totally wiped out ?

 Source - Chopper 08/02/23

Link

Afternoon!

Conservative MPs scratching their heads at Rishi Sunak’s bloodless reshuffle yesterday should look away now.

An exclusive, large-scale MRP poll of 28,000 people for the Chopper’s Politics Newsletter and The Telegraph found that if there were an “imminent general election”, the Tories would be left with fewer seats than the SNP.

The figures from pollsters Find Out Now and experts Electoral Calculus report Labour winning 49 per cent of the votes cast and the Tories down to 23 per cent. The regression techniques of MRP polling mean that results in individual seats can be calculated.

Translated into numbers of MPs, Labour gain 306 seats, taking the party’s total number of MPs to a record 509 (out of only 650 available).

The SNP is the next largest party in the Commons, with 50 MPs, and the Conservatives will be in third place with just 45 seats, down from 365 at the 2019 election.

The Liberal Democrats more than double their number of MPs from 11 to 23. Plaid Cymru and the Greens are unchanged at four MPs and one MP respectively.

Tellingly, Reform UK, which is seen as a protest party to the Right of the Tories, wins six per cent of the votes, but is left without a single MP.

The Conservatives would face electoral near-annihilation and would not even be the official opposition. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, would be the Leader of the Opposition.

The polling was carried out from Jan 27 to Feb 5, before the Prime Minister shuffled his ministerial team and created more government departments. But it is hard to see how this would have made any difference to the polling numbers.

Part of the problem for the Tories is that Conservative losses are worse in stronger seats.

The various sleaze scandals that have afflicted the Tories have not helped, with 63 per cent of voters believing that “the Conservatives are fundamentally corrupt”.

There is a notable list of 15 Conservative Cabinet ministers who will lose their seats including – incredibly – Sunak himself, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Health Secretary Steve Barclay (as well as ex-PMs Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, the former chancellor).

The crumb of hope for the Tories is that just one in three voters, 34 per cent, think Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer would make a good Prime Minister, against 18 per cent who thought the same of Sunak.

Chris Holbrook, the chief executive of Find Out Now, tells us that the forecasts make for “shocking reading for Conservatives”, adding: “Mending perceptions of corruption may be their best hope.”

Martin Baxter, the chief executive of Electoral Calculus, adds: “The Conservatives have been far behind in the polls for the last four months, with little sign of improvement.

“They have lost support across the country, particularly in traditionally strong Conservative areas, which bodes very badly for the next general election.

“That election could be a near-wipeout, and worse than 1997, with the Conservatives not even being the main opposition party.”

Greg Hands, the new Conservative chairman, sent out an email to Tory supporters with the number “18” in the subject line, saying: “The next 18 months will see us win or lose the next general election.”

He is not wrong. But instead of losing the election, the Tories presently appear on a course of electoral annihilation, unless some corrective action is taken by Sunak.

Cheerio!

Chopper