The Telegraph splash this morning will make glum reading for the Tories as the most detailed survey in five years from YouGov shows the Conservatives are heading for an electoral wipeout as big as their defeat in 1997, when Tony Blair entered Downing Street. The survey of 14,000 people put the Tories retaining just 169 seats, while Labour take 385, giving Sir Keir Starmer a 120-seat majority. A huge swing from just 5 years ago when Boris won an 80-seat majority. 

Along with more than half the Tory seats won in 2019, eleven cabinet ministers, including Jeremy Hunt and Penny Mordaunt, are expected to lose their seats. Lord Frost wrote in The Telegraph that the “stunningly awful” results are thanks to dissatisfaction on policy, above all, immigration rather than Labour popularity. Rishi will be hoping he can finally get flights off the ground to Rwanda soon, though even if that does happen, it’ll likely not be enough…

According to YouGov, three-quarters of the voters who have left the Tories are Leave voters, with Reform UK drawing millions of voters from the Conservatives, costing the Tories 96 seats, and helping Labour take the keys to Number 10 – without even winning a seat. The former Brexit party will attract both those traditional Tory voters and the Brexit voters who switched from Labour to Conservative in 2019 in order to “Get Brexit Done“. This is what happens when you have a government and Number 10 full of Remainers.