Forecasts of a 1997-style UK election wipeout could be optimistic

The key battlegrounds in the UK’s next general election will be seats where Conservative MPs thought they had a “job for life”.  

So what? That is a lot of seats. A rising tide of anti-government sentiment is redefining what it means to represent a marginal constituency in the House of Commons – and forcing even pessimistic Tories to adjust their expectations. 

• A recent YouGov poll published in the Telegraph showed the Conservatives were on course for a 1997-style wipeout, losing more than half the current total of 349 MPs in a Labour landslide.  
• But speaking at a Tortoise event last night, Professor Sir John Curtice said the YouGov prediction that Tories would end up with around 160 seats was “generous”.
• Noting Labour’s consistent poll lead of nearly 20 points, Curtice – the UK’s leading polling expert – said Conservative MPs would need to have at least a 30-point majority for any peace of mind ahead of the election. 

Exactly 200 Conservative MPs are defending majorities of 30 points or less. If they all lost their seats the party would be left with 149. The casualties would include Michael Gove, MP for Surrey Heath and a leading champion of Brexit.

Bagged for life. Jess Phillips, Labour’s MP for Birmingham Yardley, said such a swing would see MPs who until recently felt they had jobs for life turfed out of parliament. 

Matt Warman, Conservative MP for Boston and Skegness – one of the safest seats in the country with a majority of around 25,000 – acknowledged that he could not take his position for granted. 

Reformation. Polls suggest the damage to the Tory vote will be compounded by Reform, the hardline pro-Brexit party competing in key seats for votes Ukip won in 2017. In 2019, around 70 per cent of Warman’s constituents voted Conservative. In 2017, that figure was 44 per cent, with Ukip taking a sizeable chunk. The impact of Reform will be especially marked if Nigel Farage stands as one of its candidates.

Absolute numbers. Curtice’s 30-point warning chimes with one that backbenchers were given last summer by the US pollster Frank Luntz, who said anyone with a majority of 15,000 or less should be worried. 

Location? Not so much. “At 20 points ahead you don’t have to worry about geography,” Curtice said, though he also noted that: 

• the Red Wall – where the Conservatives secured key historic victories in 2019 – is “all going to go”;
• the Blue Wall – historically Tory heartland – is under targeted assault from the Liberal Democrats but may yet hold out; and
• Scotland, where the SNP is faltering after Nicola Sturgeon’s departure, is ripe for Labour’s taking. “Virtually every seat in Scotland is marginal between Labour and the SNP.” 

Time for change? Conservatives hoping that polls will narrow between now and D-Day – likely in November – were given short shrift by Curtice, who said the lesson of history is that there is relatively little movement in voter sentiment in the run-up to elections when snap elections are excluded from the analysis.

Instead, there have been just 12 weeks of “active” movement in the polls since 2019: the six weeks surrounding Liz Truss’s premiership and the fallout of the 2022 mini-Budget and in a six week period of “partygate” news stories in late 2021. 

Rishi Sunak has had zero long-term impact on the polls, and his failure to vote on whether Boris Johnson had misled Parliament sealed his fate, Curtice claimed. 

Long tail. Poor parliamentary standards have dominated much Westminster coverage this parliament, but it’s the economy (stupid) which continues to resonate most strongly with the public:

• Voters are more pessimistic about the economy this parliament than in any parliament since 1979, Curtice said. “All Labour has to do is pin the tail on the Conservative donkey by reminding voters of Liz Truss.”

What’s more… For all the talk of plotting to get Sunak out of Number 10, sources tell Tortoise that Truss and those around her have been actively seeking to dissuade Tory MPs from attempting any kind of leadership challenge. 

“They want him to own the defeat, so he will go down in history as the worst PM,” one backbencher said.

The bar is low.

And finally… UK politicians have not yet got their heads around the challenge of generative AI. A voluntary code of conduct would help define what political actors should and should not do for the rest of this election campaign, argues Tim Gordon, a founding partner at Best Practice AI.