New polling now suggests that the Conservative Party would lose this year’s general election by a far larger margin than expected. The YouGov survey of more than 14,000 people—described by its publisher as “the most authoritative opinion poll in five years”—suggests that if a general election was held today, the Tories would suffer their largest wipeout in decades.
Tory failures on immigration drive this catastrophic polling. After the party promised Westminster would “take back control” of the nation’s borders following Britain’s exit from the EU, record numbers of both legal and illegal new arrivals have become more difficult to defend. Its failures have also become more humiliating, to the extent that even Labour, which is itself responsible for getting the ball rolling on mass migration the last time it was in office, is now able to properly mock the government for its mess-ups, as costly as they are consistent.
Former government pollster James Johnson said the government’s inability to get to grips with illegal Channel crossings in particular “almost blows the roof off focus group venues,” adding:
It’s an issue that unites the country. More than seven in ten of defectors in the North and South alike voted Leave in the Brexit referendum, and 75% of Tory defectors in the South want migration to be lower, close to the 79% in the North who say the same.
Tory peer Lord Frost, who contributed to the poll, also commented that the Tories could only now avoid defeat by being “as tough as it takes on immigration.”
If the polling is correct, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt would be one of 11 Cabinet ministers to lose their seats and Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour would win the largest Parliamentary majority this century.
It is important to note that these results are driven primarily by a drop in support for the Conservatives rather than a groundswell of support for Labour. The Daily Telegraph reports that eight out of ten of the erstwhile Tory voters abandoning the party voted Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum—a vote often seen as synonymous with wanting less immigration.
Leftwing commentators have attacked the poll over its association with Frost and the ‘Conservative Britain Alliance’ group of Tory donors, saying it is simply an attempt to get the party to “lurch even further to the right.” Clearly, even the return of liberal David Cameron to Cabinet has failed to convince large elements of the political class that the Tories are anything but conservative.
The voters are, of course, a different matter altogether.
