Michael Gove warns by-elections will be difficult
Rishi Sunak is heading for devastating by-election defeats on July 20 according to new polling out this morning.
Surveys conducted in both Boris Johnson’s old London seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip and Nigel Adams’s old North Yorkshire seat of Selby and Ainsty, show the Tories are heading for historic defeats at the hands of Sir Keir Starmer.
Boris Johnson’s old seat in Greater London is on paper the easiest seat for Labour to take in the upcoming swathe of by-elections, with Mr Johnson securing just a 7,000 majority in 2019.
However the seat hasn’t been won by Labour since 1966, with even Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide failing to take the constituency.
Today’s poll shows Labour on course for a whopping majority, with an eight-point lead over the Tory candidate.
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Labour’s Danny Beales garners 41 percent support, to the Tories’ Steve Tuckwell’s 33 percent.
Such a result would represent an 11.5 percent swing to Labour.
A separate poll in Selby shows the Tories on course for an even more impressive defeat.
JL Partners finds a 12 point lead for Labour in the historically safe Conservative seat, with 41 percent saying they’ll vote for Labour’s Keir Mather versus just 29 percent for the Conservatives’ Claire Holmes.
This would represent a near 24-point swing from the Tories to Labour in the seat, boosting Keir Starmer’s hopes of a landslide majority at the next election.
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Mr Sunak is facing a slew of by-elections across the country over the coming months.
On July 20, voters in Somerset and Frome will be joining their counterparts in Uxbridge and Selby at the ballot box, after the resignation of disgraced MP David Warburton.
Somerset is also being chalked up as a likely defeat, though at the hands of the Lib Dems.
Following these three will come the likely by-elections for Nadine Dorries (Bedfordshire) and Chris Pincher (Tamworth), which will also prove very tricky to hold despite massive Tory majorities in both seats.
Former SNP MP Margaret Ferrier in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will also likely be triggered by the ongoing recall petition in her constituency, though this will prove a two-way battle between the SNP and Labour.
Tory MPs are increasingly gloomy about the party’s electoral fortunes, with one telling the Express this week that successive by-election defeats all across the country are sapping morale.
A poll of Mr Sunak’s own electoral qualities out today, the one year anniversary of Boris Johnson’s resignation, shows just one in four voters think the Prime Minister is a better leader than Mr Johnson.
He scores highest among Lib Dems and Remain voters, who are unlikely to back the Tories anyway.
2019 Conservative voters and Leave voters remain the most pro-Boris, with the 35 percent of the former saying Mr Sunak is a worse PM than Mr Johnson.
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