Tory party set for multiple ‘Portillo moments’, poll predicts

The Conservatives are set for multiple “Portillo moments” at the general election, a major new poll has predicted.

Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, and Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister, are among the Tory frontbenchers a constituency-level survey suggests will be ousted.

A total of eight Cabinet ministers are projected to lose their seats, while another seven, including Penny Mordaunt and the Tory chairman Richard Holden, are in races which are too close to call.

The phrase “Portillo moment” was coined following the defeat of Michael Portillo, a former Tory defence secretary, who unexpectedly lost his seat in New Labour’s 1997 landslide.

The poll by More in Common surveyed 13,556 voters between June 24 and July 1 and put the Tories on just 126 seats, with Labour forecast to win with a majority of 210 – the largest in modern British history.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are on track to more than quadruple their number of MPs from 11 to 52.

Mr Hunt is seeking re-election in the ultra-marginal constituency of Godalming and Ash, where he has predicted there will be fewer than 1,500 votes between him and his Liberal Democrat rival.

However, the More in Common survey suggests the race will be less tight than that, with the Liberal Democrats instead winning by 16 per cent.

Mr Shapps, who succeeded Ben Wallace when he stood down last year, is expected to lose to Labour in Welwyn Hatfield by the same margin.

He has repeatedly sounded the alarm during the campaign about Sir Keir Starmer’s refusal to match the Tory pledge to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by the end of the decade.

Meanwhile, Mr Mercer is also on course for defeat in his Plymouth Moor View seat to Labour’s Fred Thomas, a fellow veteran who is projected to win 42.5 per cent of the vote, to Mr Mercer’s 29.4 per cent.

The poll used the multi-level regression and poststratification (MRP) method, which successfully forecast the previous two general elections by predicting which seats will go to which party, while factoring in high numbers of undecided voters.

The other likely Cabinet casualties are Alex Chalk, the Justice Secretary, in Cheltenham; Victoria Prentis, the Attorney General, in Banbury; Simon Hart, the Chief Whip, in Caerfyrddin; David TC Davies, the Welsh Secretary, in Monmouth; and Michael Tomlinson, the illegal immigration minister, in Dorset and North Poole.

Mr Chalk and Mr Tomlinson will lose to the Liberal Democrats, the poll predicted, while Ms Prentis, Mr Davies and Mr Hart will lose their seats at the expense of Labour.

Widely seen as on the centrist wing of the party, Ms Prentis signed off on the Government’s Rwanda plan earlier this year, while Mr Davies has played a major role in the general election campaign through his attacks on the Labour-run Welsh government.

Ms Mordaunt’s race in Portsmouth North being too close to call is significant because she has been touted as a likely entrant in the race to succeed Rishi Sunak for the Tory leadership if the party loses power on Thursday.

Also too close for More in Common to call are contests involving Mr Holden, who was parachuted into Basildon and Billericay just before nominations closed to a backlash from party activists.

Esther McVey, the minister for common sense, Andrew Mitchell, the deputy foreign secretary and Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, also face close fights with Labour.

Reform is projected to win two MPs despite being expected to win millions of votes. These are Lee Ashfield, expected to hold on to his Ashfield constituency, and party leader Nigel Farage, who is set to succeed in Clacton and enter Parliament at the eighth time of trying.

The SNP, meanwhile, is expected to fall to just 16 seats, ending a generation of dominance in Scottish politics.

Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, could lose his seat as a result of a Labour surge that would see Sir Keir Starmer’s party pick up 33 seats north of the border.

Luke Tryl, the executive director of More in Common, said: “With hours to go before polls opening, our latest MRP suggests the Conservative Party are heading for the worst result in their history, while Labour look set to achieve a record-breaking majority of their own.

But Mr Tryl went on to warn it would be “a mistake to assume that tomorrow doesn’t matter”, noting that more than 100 constituencies were still too close to call.

“With over a hundred seats still in the balance, the size of Labour’s victory, the extent to which the Conservatives are able to form a viable opposition, as well as the challenge they face from the Liberal Democrats, along with how many Green and Reform UK MPs join the House of Commons will all be determined by where those still undecided voters ultimately cast their ballot,” Mr Tryl added.