One of UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s most loyal cabinet allies has said Labour is likely to win “the largest majority any party has ever achieved”.
UK work and pensions secretary Mel Stride said it is “highly unlikely” that polls suggesting a victory for Sir Keir Starmer’s party in the upcoming UK General Election are wrong.
But he said people will “regret” it if Labour wins the kind of landslide that means it has “untrammelled” power without an effective Tory opposition.
Mr Stride, who helped run Mr Sunak’s campaign for the Conservative leadership and has made regular appearances on the TV and radio during the election campaign as the Tories’ spokesperson, appeared resigned to a heavy defeat.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I have accepted that where the polls are at the moment – and it seems highly unlikely that they are very, very wrong, because they’ve been consistently in the same place for some time – that we are therefore tomorrow highly likely to be in a situation where we have the largest majority that any party has ever achieved.”
Voter intention surveys have suggested a Labour lead of around 20 points, while massive multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) studies, which forecast constituency level results, have consistently indicated a Labour landslide.
Mr Stride told GB News: “If you look at the polls, it is pretty clear that Labour at this stage are heading for an extraordinary landslide on a scale that has probably never, ever been seen in this country before.”
But he said that if about 130,000 people in around 100 marginal seats who might be considering voting Reform or Liberal Democrat instead give their vote to the Tories, it would help to give Parliament a more robust opposition.
“I’m really worried about an untrammelled Labour Party in power, and that really needs to be checked, and people will regret it if we don’t have that, I think,” Mr Stride told LBC.
Mr Sunak and Mr Starmer are embarking on their final day of campaigning ahead of Thursday’s vote.
Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson made a surprise appearance at a Tory rally on Tuesday night in an effort to give the Conservative campaign a late boost.
But former UK home secretary Suella Braverman, a potential contender for the Tory leadership if Mr Sunak quits, wrote in the Telegraph: “One needs to read the writing on the wall: it’s over, and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition.”
Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator, Pat McFadden, mocked the decision to bring Mr Johnson back to support his former rival.
“The show of unity – I’ve had boiled eggs that have lasted longer than this show of unity,” he told Times Radio.
“Almost before he (Mr Johnson) was finished speaking, we had Suella Braverman in The Telegraph saying that it had all been a terrible mess.
“I think maybe that is the Conservatives’ problem, that it is all quite late for Boris to now be throwing his weight behind a Prime Minister, when, I think – to borrow a phrase from Northern Ireland – even the dogs in the street know there’s not a lot of love lost there.”
A Survation MRP study suggested Labour is on course to win more seats than it did in Tony Blair’s landslide.
The survey of 34,558 and constituency-level modelling suggested it is “99 per cent certain” Labour will secure more than the 418 seats won in 1997.
The MRP poll data suggests prominent Tories could lose their seats to Labour, including Commons leader Penny Mordaunt in Portsmouth North, UK defence secretary Grant Shapps in Welwyn Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and party chair Richard Holden in Basildon and Billericay, Essex.
UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt is set to lose the Godalming and Ash seat in Surrey, and education secretary Gillian Keegan her Chichester, Sussex, seat to the Liberal Democrats.
“The Conservative Party is virtually certain to win a lower share of the vote than at any past general election,” Survation said.
A Techne UK survey of 5,503 voters for The Independent, also unveiled overnight, gave Labour (40 per cent) a 19-point lead over the Tories (21 per cent).
