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Louise Thomas
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Rishi Sunak will lead the Conservatives to their worst election result in history, with a major poll for The Independent suggesting that the party will hold on to just 82 seats.
The Techne survey, released on the eve of the general election, put Labour on course for a 272-seat majority, with Sir Keir Starmer winning 461 seats.
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After a day of Tory infighting over the potential outcome of the election, with one of Mr Sunak’s closest allies conceding that Labour will win in a record-breaking landslide, four polls predicted how many seats each party would gain.
While there was a range of results, the worst outcome put the Tories on course to drop below 100 seats, while the best-case scenario saw them winning just 126. This would far exceed the defeat faced by John Major in 1997, when the number of Conservative seats fell to 165.
All outcomes would beat the Tories’ worst election result in history, which came in 1906 when the party won just 156 seats and Arthur Balfour, who had quit as prime minister a month earlier, lost in his own constituency.
The unprecedented drubbing predicted in Thursday’s election marks an incredible fall from grace for the party, which won 365 seats just five years ago under Boris Johnson. Even members of Mr Sunak’s inner circle have warned that he could lose in his constituency of Richmond and Northallerton, one of the safest Tory seats in the country.
The Techne poll for The Independent forecast that Sir Keir would become prime minister with 461 seats, the Conservatives would come second with 82, and the Liberal Democrats third with 55. Meanwhile, it suggested that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK would win seven seats, including Clacton in Essex where Mr Farage is standing.
The bombshell survey came as the prime minister was forced to insist he was still “fighting hard for every vote” after cabinet minister Mel Stride said Britain was heading for “the largest Labour landslide this country has ever seen”.
Meanwhile, former home secretary Suella Braverman declared the race over, urging the party to “prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition”.
As walls crumbled around the Conservatives, Sir Keir remained cautious, denying that a Labour landslide was inevitable and telling voters: “I say, if you want change, you have to vote for it.”
But after weeks of Labour sitting 20 points or more ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls, the slew of surveys suggested that Mr Sunak would lead his party to a crushing defeat.
A poll by More in Common predicted that the party would win just 126 seats, with Labour on a total of 430. It also indicated that the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, defence secretary Grant Shapps, and veterans minister Johnny Mercer are all on course to be ousted by their constituents.
Speaking to Times Radio on Wednesday, work and pensions secretary Mr Stride made the extraordinary concession: “I totally accept that where the polls are at the moment means that tomorrow is likely to see the largest Labour landslide majority this country has ever seen – much bigger than 1997.”
But brushing off the doom and gloom, Mr Sunak told ITV’s This Morning: “We just saw some analysis which showed that just 130,000 people can make the difference in this election. So, everyone watching who thinks, ‘Oh, this is all a foregone conclusion’ – it’s not.”
The eve of the election also saw the publication of a poll by Focaldata suggesting that the Conservatives would retain just 108 seats, with Labour storming to power on 444.
And YouGov’s final survey of the general election projected that Labour would win 431 seats, with the Conservative Party suffering its worst ever result with just 102.
Mr Sunak will be hoping that a last-minute intervention by Mr Johnson will be enough to stem some of the losses. At a rally for the Tory faithful on Tuesday night, the former prime minister made his first in-person appearance on the campaign trail. Warning against a “Labour sledgehammer majority … pregnant with horrors”, Mr Johnson urged Tory activists to fight for every possible vote in the remaining hours of the campaign.
But former chancellor George Osborne said Mr Johnson’s intervention had made him wonder “what was the point of changing leaders in the first place”.
The senior Tory said on his Political Thinking podcast that the party would descend into chaos after the results were counted on Friday. He said: “Tory discipline – which is fraying, to put it mildly – will completely collapse on the night,” adding: “All hell is going to break out in the Tory party in the early hours of Friday morning.”
Mr Osborne said that Labour, by contrast, will see discipline become even stronger. “There’s not going to be anyone who wants to say anything that is going to damage their chances of being in Keir Starmer’s cabinet,” he added.
After the last day of campaigning, Mr Sunak said he has a “clear conscience” in relation to the work he has done as prime minister.
He said: “In terms of how I do this job, I work as hard as I can, I do what I believe is right for the country. That ‘clear conscience is the softest pillow’, as my father-in-law says.
“As long as I can look [at] myself in the mirror and know that I am working as hard as I can, doing what I believe is right for the country, that is how I get through, and that is what I believe I am doing.”
