Tories dealing with normal election wipeout with simply 130 seats, says polling guru | EUROtoday

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Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are dealing with their worst ever end result on the normal election and could possibly be left with simply 130 seats, in keeping with Professor Sir John Curtice.

The nation’s high polling guru warned of the grim state of affairs confronted by the Tories as they head into winter with the information dominated by infighting over the prime minister’s Rwanda deportation plan.

Prof Curtice stated Mr Sunak’s celebration can be “lucky to win [many] more than 200 seats” and will see a fair worse end result if its dire ballot rankings continued.

“If these patterns were to be replicated in a general election, the outcome for the Conservatives could be bleak indeed – maybe as few as 130 seats, the worst outcome in the party’s history,” he wrote for The Sunday Telegraph.

The consequence can be even worse than the 165 seats the Tories had been left with in 1997, when the celebration, then led by John Major, was thumped by Tony Blair’s Labour – which received a landslide 179-seat majority.

With Labour having fun with a constant polling lead of shut to twenty factors, Prof Curtice stated voters seem to have “stopped listening” to the Tories on the large points.

He warned Mr Sunak that his latest anti-immigration push had “not gone well”. The elections knowledgeable stated it seemed just like the Rwanda invoice “could divide the party just as [Theresa] May’s ill-fated Brexit deal did in 2019”.

On the main cut up at the moment looming in response to Mr Sunak’s plans, Prof Curtice wrote: “Divided parties rarely prosper at the polls. In pursuing their disagreements with Mr Sunak over immigration, Tory MPs should realise they are potentially playing with fire.”

He added: “Even though the polls have repeatedly indicated that the government’s Rwanda policy is relatively popular – at least among those who voted Conservative in 2019 – the first polls since this week’s developments suggest they also are unlikely to move the electoral dial.”

He continued: “We should not be surprised. Although many 2019 Conservative voters are unhappy about the level of legal and ‘illegal’ immigration, those who feel that immigration has gone up a lot are not especially likely to say they will not vote Conservative again.”

There is theory at Westminster that Mr Sunak could also be pressured right into a snap election within the early a part of 2024 if he struggles to get his Rwanda invoice by means of parliament.

But cupboard minister Michael Gove insisted that Mr Sunak’s authorities is “not contemplating” holding an early normal election if the Rwanda invoice is voted down. Asked if it was an choice, the senior Sunak ally advised Sky News: “No, we’re not contemplating that.”

A gaggle of unnamed Tory MPs have advised The Mail on Sunday that they want to eliminate Mr Sunak – with some even eager to deliver again Boris Johnson as chief.

Dubbed the “pasta plotters”, a small group of anti-Sunak MPs and strategists had been stated to have met at an Italian restaurant to plan “an Advent calendar of s***” for the present Tory chief over the Rwanda subject this December.

“Whatever you feel about him, one thing no one can question is [Mr Johnson]’s effectiveness as a campaigner,” one red-wall MP advised the newspaper. But with Mr Johnson out of parliament, the so-called pasta plotters are stated to be unsure who might realistically change Mr Sunak.

Damian Green – chair of the One Nation wing – supplied a warning to any right-wing rebels pouncing on the Rwanda subject as a solution to eliminate Mr Sunak.

“Anyone who thinks that what the Conservative Party or the country needs is a change of prime minister is either mad, or malicious, or both,” he advised the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Mr Green added: “It is a very, very small number doing that [plotting to oust Mr Sunak].”