Are the Tories too far behind to recover?
Near certain defeat seems to face Sunak’s party
In an analysis in the I the prominent political scientist Professor John Curtice suggests that the Tories might be too far behind to stage a meaningful recovery to avoid being defeated at the next general election
Things went very wrong for the party in the aftermath of the mini-budget last September and as the polling shows the Tories are still a long way behind since in spite of staging a little bit of a recovery. Talking of LAB Curtice writes:
Since September‘s “fiscal event” the party has regularly been enjoying poll leads of 10 points or more, putting the party in a stronger position than at any time since it was turfed out office in 2010 and redolent of the kind of poll leads that the party enjoyed in the years leading up to the 1997 election. That, of course, is not a comforting precedent for Tory MPs at all….Now only just over 40 per cent of those who voted Leave in 2016 support the Conservatives, well down on the 74 per cent who did so in 2019. In 2019 these voters were won around by a promise to “get Brexit done”. But now that it has been done they, like everyone else, are looking for competent government at home – and have become doubtful that the Conservatives can provide it
This is certainly in line with the way punters are seeing it with Starmer now standing as a 70%+ betting chance to be the post-election PM.